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He couldn’t win but he couldn’t lose, and it’s damn hard to play for a draw. Not tanking a game nailed one of many nails in Matthew Primus’ coaching coffin.
Deliberately throwing professional games is frowned upon, but the reality is it happens and the AFL’s draft system encourages it.
Primus is gone, Port Adelaide are in no better position than they were this time two years ago, and whoever earns the new senior coaching job at Alberton is on the verge of career suicide.
The Power are in strife and a series of off-field dramas have surrounded this club. From the inside out they appear unified, but are they fooling anyone? Ignoring the ladder, they are the worst positioned club in the competition and it is not a good time to be there with a string of rule changes to be implemented over the coming months.
They are in more debt than any other club, their supporters are abandoning them, and the outlook is bleak.
Unfortunately for Primus, the lack of support given to him due to Port Adelaide’s financial struggles has never given him a complete opportunity to prove himself. With the worst support staff in his debut season of coaching, it was foreseeable to see him struggling early in his career.
Dean Laidley, his supposed senior assistant, was not a full-time coach and 24-year-old assistant Ryan McMillin had never played a game of senior football.
Fast forward to the end of the 2011 season. Port had pulled a major coup in re-signing Jackson Trengove and John Butcher after both were heavily sought by more enviable Victorian clubs. The Power had struggled all season but the football world had come to terms with the fact that they were in a rebuilding phase and the club now only had one possible direction.
The defining point of Primus’ career, however, was Round 24. Sitting on two wins for the 2011 season, one less than the Gold Coast Suns, Primus had the opportunity to tank one game for the good of the clubs future. In a game no one expected Port to win, Primus won the only game Port Adelaide fans would have been happy to lose.
Going into that final round, the Suns were playing Hawthorn, a game they had no chance of winning, and Port Adelaide had Melbourne, ironically the team now infamous for tanking. It would have been poetic justice to throw one game for the good of the club’s future.
The consequence of this win; Port Adelaide sacrificed the 17-year-old prodigy Jaeger O’Meara. Gold Coast finished at the bottom of the ladder and used the fourth pick in the draft to attain O’Meara from GWS. Port Adelaide drafted Chad Wingard with the fifth pick.
Two new rules have buried the Power. They are the scrapping of priority draft picks and free agency.
Melbourne and Carlton found a rule to exploit and they did so. Their supporters knew they were doing it. We all did. Wins would have been nice but it was always about long-term strategy and this was blatantly obvious. We complained, we whinged, we whined and the AFL finally did something about it.
The introduction of free agency, however, is going to hurt Port Adelaide more so than any other club in the competition. Players will not want to be there and therefore ignore moving to Alberton.
If the clubs supporter base stays the way it is and the club cannot show enough on field improvement, free agency will see Port’s good players leave and equally restless players at other clubs bypass the teal.
Although I have nothing against Wingard, and O’Meara is still raw and unproven, Power fans should have little hesitation selecting one over the other.
I’m as sick of talking about the Melbourne tanking saga as anyone but the Port Adelaide situation is a prime example of how not tanking can be more damaging than a ‘development’ game.
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