We have overrated Port Adelaide

Haha. Just like Freo everytime we play St Kilda. Ross feels sorry for his old side and give the Saints a win.

haha both i guess!

Shaun Hart's a legend. Who are you?

Not wise to write off the Power. Still think they can be a threat this year. might I add that if they win today, which they well might, they'll be on the same points as Hawthorn? Yes they are playing different quality of football but we know how good they are when they play well.

Nothing like a touch of religious intolerance to make you feel righteous

Surely you don't take anything he has to say seriously?

Deride someone for using hindsight, do the exact same thing.

Gene you have twice claimed that Port are using performance enhancing drugs. Do you have any way to back up such big, slanderous claims?

No doubt ken hinkley can coach but some of the credit should go to matty primus for blooding the youngers and giving them a good taste of what afl football is all about and he did all the heavy lifting during those tough times and made it alot easier for ken and all he needed to do was assess the team list and then create a gameplan that suits the team which is run and gun style

Michael Voss is the problem his coaching experience doesn't suit port Adelaides style of play and its like he's not taking the job seriously

They're still a very dangerous team, we all know about how quickly they can score and the fact that they can dismantle teams near the top of the ladder. They obviously lack consistency and maybe a bit of confidence right now, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them make a killer run towards the back end of the year going into September with that x factor they have

It was no coincidence Michael Voss felt sorry for his old club so he must of deliberately sabotaged ken hinkley game plan so he can see his old club win Just need to get rid of that bias clown (Michael Voss) and only recruit coaches that are committed to port Adelaide and not coaches that feel sympathy for their old club Michael Voss is definitely not committed to port Adelaide

You're welcome Paul. Reasons why their run has dropped off? 1. Last year they played like they had nothing to lose. Easy to do that when nobody expects anything of you, infinitely harder when you're under real pressure to perform. 2. Teams have realized how important it is to exploit them the other way they turn it over, and how suspect their defense is in transition because so many of their defenders are poor one-on-one players. 3. Teams have closed the fitness gap (or started ingesting Darren's Burgess' secret recipe themselves) so Port's players are no confident sprinting at will knowing they'll still have enough left in the tank to outlast their opponent. 4. Last year they were able to shock & awe many teams. Now everyone knows what to expect. You could be right about the fatigue though. Maybe last season took so much out of them physically & mentally that they weren't able to get as much out of their preseason as the year before. Or what we saw last year was the arc of natural improvement under a fairly new coach reaching its zenith while other teams have gone past them. Or being a young team they did start believing all the press being written about them -plenty of that in dinky 2 team Adelaide I'll bet- and slackened off. Like I said though, hindsight. Their second half of last year was extremely ordinary but people chose to forget it because they flopped into the finals and played three good games, only two against actual opposition.

Just sack that bike helmet guy Shaun hart because listening to his religious garbage must be so boring that the players are not trying and he was a useless overrated hack as a player and ever since paddy burger (Ryder) came they can't keep the ball inside 50 and struggling to score I reckon Michael Voss wanted port to lose the game last week because he felt sorry for his old club and his best mate leppa

"When they are on they are unstoppable. When they aren’t they are pretty average." Did you just describe North Melbourne or Port Adelaide?

Perhaps Port just got complacent and didn't put the running yards in, they never were a super high skill team bar a few players, but they could run sides into the ground with their fitness and work ethic. This year they don't seem to be running sides down.

Earlier in the week I was thinking about form cycles (patches of form) and what lessons and comparisons that we could make by looking into the past. It could be argued that Port & WC have traded places since late 2014. WC started their run of good form in R19 last year and have won 9 of their last 12 games while Port has done the opposite in losing 10 of their last 16 games. I am not saying that WC has a better list than Port or that they should be above them on the ladder because on paper they shouldn't and it's still only R7 and Port still has time to turn their season around but they do need to get on their bikes very quickly if they want to make the Top 4. Port has also played more games against stronger opposition during this time so we still can't be 100% sure where WC sits just yet and it's more than likely that their form will also fall away at some point. Following are some observations. 1) WC has seemingly come out of nowhere just like Port in 2013. The same can be said of the Doggies and to a lesser extent GWS with the difference being that most people rated the Dogs & GWS lists pretty highly while they didn't rate WC's. 2) Port & WC sit right next to each other on the list age ladder, both have very young teams. 3) all teams will go through form cycles during a season and even the lowest of teams will hit a good patch of form and win some games they weren't expected to win or at least be very competitive. Even if it is only for a 4-5 game patch history tells us this will happen more often than not. 4) Younger teams (incl Port) should be expected to have more up and downs than the older and more battled hardened lists of Freo, Hawks, Swans and even North so Port dropping off should not be a real surprise. How many years have we been saying that North should have finished higher than they did? 5) even the better teams will have form cycles with the difference between Freo 2014 and 2015 being a good example of that. 5) The Crows, Bombers and GCS were talked up by many as potential finalists in 2015. The Crows have had a pretty good start while the other two have had a slower start than they would have hoped for. I expect the Bombers to hit a patch of good form at some stage but I am not sure what to make of GCS 2015 because of their injuries and a new coach (like WC 2014). If they don't improve this year you would think that they would improve significantly next year and it shouldn't be a surprise if they do because their underlying fundamentals are pretty strong. 6) WC, Doggies and GWS have had strong starts to the year but if form is cyclical as I believe it is the question is, when will these three teams start to drop off, how long will it last for, how much damage will it cause them and will they still win games during their poor patches? GCS looked certain finalists last year before dropping away suddenly which ended with McKenna getting sacked. It goes to show how quickly things can change. 7) the best teams find a way to win more games than they will lose when their form drops away (depending on who they play during this time). 8) Confidence can do amazing things to a team (especially young ones) and while WC, Doggies and GWS are playing with a lot of confidence ATM Port has lost theirs. 9) getting ahead of themselves - it could be argued that Port and GCS believed the pre-season hype and lost sight of the fundamentals that earned them those plaudits in the first place. 10) Teams are never as good as we think they are and they are never as bad as we think they are. A lot of this game is played between the ears with injuries being the great unknown and leveller. We tend to follow the ebbs and flows of a team by buying into the hype (good and bad) when we should be paying more attention to the underlying fundamentals. Port should be able to turn their season around, if they can't then I would expect them to come back pretty strong in 2015 just like Freo have this year but they are still a lot younger than Freo so we should keep a lid on it. I also expect some of current flavours of the month like WC, Doggies & GWS to have up and down patches this year and next, just like Port is experiencing currently. Port weren't as good as we thought they were last year and they are not as bad as some might think they are now. The Tigers showed signs of turning their season around last week and we saw what happened last year when they hit their purple patch of form. Seeing that Port have lost 10 of their last 16 games and that the Tigers seem to have turned the corner it sets this weekends game up as a pivotal one for both teams fortunes. The winner will be sitting at 4-4 and the loser will be 3-5 . If Port wants to make the top 4 they probably have to win this weekend. Their draw has opened up for them and they need to make hay while the sun shines. Conversely the Tigers have a challenging patch of games coming up and this is one that they need to win. It should be a great tussle between these two sides and one that I am looking forward to watching.

Port vs Freo in round 1 remains the most intense game I have seen this year. It was absolutely frenetic. This is a team that has handily beaten Hawthorn, North and Adelaide, and lost to Freo by 7 points. Losses to Sydney, and West Coast (who are better than anybody gives them credit for), and one poor performance against Brisbane. Well too early to write them off. It is easy to forget how much they would have built up to the early games against Freo and last years Grand Finalists. Add a showdown into the mis, and you have a recipe for a major psychological let down in about round 6... And Brisbane were desperate, so once in front, things started to work for them. They will definitely be top 4. Bank on it. Unless they don't make it.

or Wines.