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The first weekend of pre-season matches comes to an end this afternoon with the Adelaide Crows, Port Adelaide and St Kilda getting their first real taste of game time in 2013. We’ll have live scores and commentary from 4.40pm AEDT.
Adelaide are the defending pre-season champions and want to show that last year’s top-four finish wasn’t just a fluke under new coach Brenton Sanderson.
St Kilda will be hoping to grow on a decent first season under their coach Scott Watters, which saw them challenge for a top eight spot.
Port Adelaide fans will have been feeling a fair bit of pain in the last couple of seasons and will be looking to for a push towards the finals under new coach Ken Hinkley.
Adelaide will be looking to some of their new brigade to put the pressure on their more experienced players tonight, with Brad Crouch impressive in their intra-club match last weekend, as too was Rory Laird.
A few of their star players will be missing. Bernie Vince and Jared Petrenko are two of those after having shoulder surgery across the off-season. They should be back in a fortnight’s time.
One of the interesting players to look out for across the NAB Cup for Adelaide will be Richard Tambling. He’s only played eleven games in two seasons with the Crows, but has been talked up by Sanderson as a possible breakthrough player.
Port Adelaide will be hoping some of their senior players to help lift the team to some bigger successes in 2013.
Brad Ebert and Travis Boak are yet to miss a beat throughout the pre-season, while Kane Cornes has been impressive in putting the newer players through their paces.
A lot of interest will be in Ollie Wines, picked up in the draft at number seven.
Despite being only 18 he already looks like a ready-made midfielder and could slot into the team effortlessly.
In fact, the new recruits are already showing signs of pushing into the main team come round one if football manager Peter Rohde’s comments recently are anything to go by.
At St Kilda, all the pressure seems to be on Lenny Hayes to produce once again from the get-go.
He was inspirational at times last season and never looked like he’d been out of the game for a year with an ACL injury.
What the Saints need to do this season is to strengthen their defence, which leaked numerous times in 2012.
It’s expected Rhys Stanley could help fill the void with Sam Fisher, so look out for that to be trialled along with some other names in today’s matches.
The good news for St Kilda across the pre-season is they’ve seemed to have come through relatively unscathed injury-wise.
Ben McEvoy is reportedly in amazing form, so let’s hope for the Saints fans that he can turn it on this year.
Like last night’s West Coast-Fremantle game, even though it’s pre-season, the Adelaide-Port Power game will be entertaining because of the showdown rivalry.
But I suspect we’ll see three close contests today. Don’t be surprised if both St Kilda and the Power come out swinging.
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