Where to next for Port Adelaide?

Saturday’s early game was something of a changing of the guard. Yesterday’s second team, Port Adelaide, were officially knocked out of the race for the top eight, by the 14th-to-fourth Western Bulldogs.

The pre-season flag favourite for much of the mainstream football media never made it into the top eight in 2015. Yes, that’s right, Port Adelaide reached ninth position in Round 10, but had been, and have since been well into the double digits on the AFL ladder.

Their spot in the eight, in a lot of ways, was taken by their Saturday vanquisher.

The Western Bulldogs should be the biggest story in football right now. After losing the entirety of their on and off-field leadership in the final months of 2014, everyone had the Dogs pegged for a bottom-four finish. We got part of that call right.

When I wrote about the Bullies after two rounds of football, I posited that their young list was showing some fantastic early development signs, and that within a couple of years they’d be in the hunt for a flag. With wet sail potential in their final four games – they have Melbourne, West Coast, North Melbourne and Brisbane to come – could the Dogs make something magic happen come September?

They may have to do it outside of the four, though, with the squeaky-looking Swans having a better run home. But that shouldn’t diminish what the Western Bulldogs have been able to do this year, both on and off the field.

It’s freakishly familiar to the situation a certain team of teal has experienced over the past few years. Port Adelaide’s story from also-ran to flag contender (on paper at least) has been told a number of times, but it’s important to the context of where the Power go from here.

We had 99 problems, but young talent wasn’t one
In 2011, Port Adelaide finished 16th on the ladder (the debutant Gold Coast finished 17th, and it took a last-round, last-gasp victory over Melbourne to drag the Power off the bottom) and were looking like a team of Average Joes.

They finished a less terrible 14th in 2012, but the whole year was dominated by talk of Travis Boak’s contract. Everyone – including myself – missed the team’s building of a pool of young talent. Port Adelaide’s current midfield core was all in place, except for 2012 draftee Ollie Wines, but an incongruent game plan and lack of skilled veteran players stopped the group from reaching their potential.

Part of that was addressed late in the 2012 season, when a Round 19 loss to Greater Western Sydney saw the demise of head coach Matthew Primus. In the proceeding off-season current coach Ken Hinkley joined the Power, having worked with Gold Coast and before that Geelong, where he had been an assistant for close to a decade – a period that included two premierships with Mark Thompson’s Cats.

Hinkley bought with him unique tactical nous, formed in the competing fires of a premiership side and an expansion club. His plan was built on endless run and carry, a willingness to take the game on with hand and foot, and a now-legendary focus on being fitter and faster than his opponents.

The data we need to do a proper comparison on something like this isn’t available to the masses (#freethestats), but the eye test absolutely confirms this. Port Adelaide would finish every single bloody game they played in what looked like the same condition they started it.

It saw Port move from being the second-worst fourth quarter team in the league (excluding the two expansion teams) in 2012, to third best in 2013. They lost final quarters by an average of 10.3 points in the final year of Primus’ reign, in the first year under Hinkley they won them by 8.1 points. That’s a three goal turnaround, and was the catalyst behind Port’s improvement from an Offensive Efficiency Rating (OER) of -17.3 (ranked 14th) to 0.5 (ranked 10th).

The Power finished the year on 12 wins, and came close to knocking off Geelong in a semi-final. At that point, it wasn’t clear whether Port’s season was an average side getting one up on squaring the ledger, or a rising powerhouse capable of big things.

It didn’t take long to work out it was the latter.

Why not now?
The Power started their 2014 campaign with 10 wins in their first 11 games, including victories against Geelong, Fremantle and Hawthorn. Their strength continued to be their finishing ability. The Power were +11.2 points in third quarters (ranked second), and a remarkable +13.2 points in fourth quarters (first) over those first 11 games.

Robbie Gray – yeah, okay Cam, he’s good – was a revelation, winning clearance after clearance but then also bobbing up in front of goal. Jay Schulz was reborn as a dead-eye. Angus Monfries, the first of the 2012 Essendon side to find his way to the Power, became a lethal small forward, his apprentice, Chad Wingard, showed flashes of his current brilliance. An underrated back line, and a ruckman in career-best form in Matthew Lobbe, were the glue. The remainder of their midfield core were gut running machines, led ably by Boak.

Their dominance doesn’t show up particularly strongly on conventional stats, though. The Power were unremarkable on uncontested possession differential in their first half (+4.6 per game – Hawthorn were +47.6), and had a slight edge on their opponents on contested possessions (+5.8 per game). They broke even on clearances, and were average on the tackle count.

Where it did show up was on their offensive and defensive efficiency – which suggests it was more about tactics than raw output.

Port’s OER lifted to second in the league, while their ability to stop teams from scoring lifted to fourth best in class. It was all built on controlling the ball, and getting into the attacking zone. The Power averaged 57 inside 50s per game, and let their opponent get down the other end just 43 times. Port Adelaide were lethal at scoring once inside the stripe (49.1 per cent of inside 50s were scores, ranked second), and generated efficient scoring shots as a result of their running style.

They were an insatiable back half transition side, as this set of screens from their Round 10 victory over Hawthorn show.

It had the football world asking: why not now? Could Port Adelaide run-and-gun their way to the flag in 2014? Everyone was in raptures, and the Power became everyone’s second team. Their off-field stocks were rising, too, aided in no small part by President Koch.

Port’s second half of the year started with the infamous Buddy Quarter in Sydney, where Lance Franklin won the game for the Swans to put the brakes on the Power’s rise. It was the start of a 4-7 second half, where the Power only managed to win games against the Western Bulldogs (72 points), Melbourne (three points), Gold Coast (nine points) and Carlton (103 points).

The run-and-gun question was answered swiftly. Port went from +24.4 points in third and fourth quarters in the first 11 games to -4.3 points in their second 11.

It didn’t stop the Power’s self-belief, though, and they came within three points of a grand final berth. The Power should have won the Preliminary final, were it not for a poor first quarter in front of goal. The Power surged in the final 15 minutes of the game, kicking four goals (and two rushed behinds) to nothing against eventual Premiers Hawthorn.

That game, and particularly the final quarter, were a microcosm of Port Adelaide.

The dreaded consensus pick
Port entered the 2015 season as many pundits’ premiership favourites, despite their lacklustre end to the 2014 regular season. We all fell in love with that final quarter in the preliminary final, and it’s easy to see why. We’re all talking about clogged toilet football, Port Adelaide’s 2014 season was like a full bottle of Drāno.

I certainly had them in the top four, but with a whopping big caveat. Port Adelaide’s advantage – their ability to be fitter and faster than their opposition – doesn’t meet the criteria of a sustainable competitive advantage.

Tactics can be a competitive advantage, at least until your opponents work them out. Employing better players than everyone else is the definition of competitive advantage. But building your charges up to prime condition is easily replicable. And so it seems for Port Adelaide.

So far in 2015, the Power are -1.8 points in second halves, ranked 11th in the competition.

But that’s not been the biggest change for Port Adelaide. In fact, it’s been the loss of Hinkley’s tactical advantage that has played as big, if not a bigger, role in their return to a more mediocre level of performance.

Port Adelaide’s OER for 2015 to date is a more average +4.4 (ranked seventh), while their defence has slipped right back into the pack at -1.4 (11th). It’s translated to big dip in their points per game scored, from 99.1 last season to 87.4 this season, and an even bigger fall in their points conceded, from 76.3 to 88.6 per game.

Forward of the ball, Schulz has returned to his career level of performance after last season’s 2.6 goals per game (at an 81 per cent crude accuracy) to just over two per game (at an accuracy of 68 per cent).

Their midfield are all down on output relative to last season, too, with Gray in particular coming right back to average from his stratospheric near-two goals a game (and an even three scoring shots) in 2014.

The player to lift his rating has been Wingard, who has probably overtaken his South Australian counterpart Eddie Betts as the All Australian forward pocket.

The Power’s 2014 forward line performance was remarkable, given they only had one genuine tall target that lurked inside the stripe. They managed to convert some 48.2 per cent of their forward 50 entries into scores, a testament to their fast ball movement and ability to take marks in the scoring zone (13.8 per game, ranked number one). They were very one dimensional, though, with Schulz taking more than twice as many grabs as the next best Port player (86).

Stopping the unstoppable
Thus far, mean regression has well and truly kicked in. Port are now scoring on just 44.7 per cent of their entries (and there are fewer entries), while Schulz has taken just 43 marks inside 50 to this point (about one third down on last year).

It was something the brass tried to rectify in the off season, with the acquisition of Paddy Ryder from Essendon. Ryder hasn’t given them the punch everyone expected he would, kicking just over a goal a game in his first year at Port Adelaide.

It’s somewhat well known that Ryder himself likes to spend time in the ruck, which he’s doing at the Power. But make no mistake, he was recruited to play as a forward, and give the incumbent Lobbe a chop out for maybe 30 to 40 per cent of the game.

I would argue two of Ryder’s three best games in season 2015 have come when he’s played as the primary ruckman, either with or without Lobbe in the side: Port’s Round 3 win over North Melbourne and their Round 15 Thursday night win over Collingwood (in the game that got us all talking about congestion).

Ryder’s strength is his wingspan and reach, particularly his ability to jump higher than most 196cm players. The biggest knock throughout his career has been his fitness and ability to run games out, but I’d hazard a guess the staff at Port Adelaide would have him as lean and mean as he’s ever been, given what they’ve managed to do with the rest of the side.

Does it mean Lobbe, who is the definition of a traditional ruckman and has taken less than two marks per game in 2015, should play a lesser role through the middle of the ground, to allow Ryder to play more in the ruck? The Power recently signed him on through 2019, suggesting he figures strongly in their plans. And why not? He’s only 26 (says the 26-year-old), and is a solid “A” as a full-time ruckman. It’s an interesting little dilemma.

The other part of Port Adelaide’s issues in scoring has been the diminishment of Hinkley’s tactical advantage over the rest of the competition. Where Port Adelaide excelled in their first half of 2014 was scoring on defensive 50 transition – slingshotting, I guess you could call it.

Figures from Fox Footy over the weekend suggest Port were the league’s third most effective side at scoring from defensive half turnovers, converting 15 per cent of their possession wins into scores.

This season, they’re 16th in the league, converting just over 10 per cent. The leaders are Hawthorn, and the laggards include Brisbane and Carlton, suggesting it’s an important indicator.

But that tells you the what, not the why. The why is where things get interesting for the Power. When watching their games, the biggest difference is not what Port Adelaide are doing with the ball, but what their opponents are doing without it. The Power are perhaps one of the only sides in the league where the opponent puts on a full ground flood, as oppose to a full ground press, in an effort to stifle Port Adelaide’s run and carry through the middle of the ground.

Where Port Adelaide circa March to June 2014 would keep the centre of the ground vacant and run and gun their way inside 50, the Port Adelaide of here and now are being forced wide and into packs of players.

We don’t have the numbers to truly get to the nub of this from an empirical perspective (#freethestats), but there are signs in the stats we do have access to.

In the first half of 2014, when the Power were up and firing, they averaged just over 4.6 more uncontested possessions than their opponents, but were a ridiculous (like, historically ridiculous) +13.5 on inside 50 differential.

In the second half of 2014, when the Power sputtered to the finishing line, they were +27.3 on uncontested possessions, but were a much more middling +2.8 on inside 50s. And so it has been so far in 2015, with the Power operating on a positive uncontested possession differential (+8.4), but now with a negative inside 50 differential.

Their mode of ball use has shifted dramatically from those halcyon days, too, with the Power moving from a net positive on kicking differential to a net negative, and from a net negative on handball use to positive.

Defensively, the Power have dropped back to a slightly below average DER, but that’s got very little to do with their back six. Jack Hombsch, Jackson Trengove and Alipate Carlisle are among the league’s most under-appreciated defensive units, and with Justin Westhoff playing as the centreback (that’s a term I’ve made up for utility players. Exhibit A: Mark Blicavs) they’re incredibly effective. Port Adelaide concede scores on just 42.6 per cent of their inside 50s, second only to the Western Bulldogs in season 2015.

The biggest driver behind their decline on defence is Port’s inability to stop sides getting into the zone. This season, the Power are allowing 53.3 inside 50s per game (ranked 13th), up from 45.5 in 2014.

What comes next?
All told, it is increasingly clear that Port Adelaide’s surge up the ladder in 2014 was nothing more than a young side, performing as a group well ahead of their time, using the innovative tactics of a fresh head coach.

And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that.

The thing everyone seems to be forgetting is that Port Adelaide are still a very young side. Coming into the 2015 season, Port Adelaide were the seventh-youngest list in the competition, and that includes the two expansion sides.

The Power are yet to build the depth of your Hawthorns and Fremantles of the world, and if anything they’re probably a couple of years away from being considered a real threat for the flag.

Age isn’t everything – the Dogs are a perfect case study in that respect – but all things considered it’s the more mature teams that tend to win flags.

That, plus talent means everything in the AFL. Port are chock full of talent, but it’s still very concentrated. This year, Port have used just 35 players, despite a few season-ending injuries and the retirement of Kane Cornes.

What it says to me is that Port Adelaide should focus this off season, and perhaps the one after, on continuing to build their stable of players.

One very live option to me would be seeing what’s on offer for Lobbe. He’s signed through 2019, on what will look like a very healthy pay packet from a team’s perspective in a couple of years’ time, and the market for ready-made, A-grade ruck talent is a very thin. Ryder could shoulder the ruck burden for a number of years to come, aided by Justin Westhoff, who does everything at a B+ level. There are two other junior rucks on the list, so it’s not as though the cupboard is bare.

I don’t think it’ll happen – teams don’t just trade out players like Lobbe, right now at least – but it could accelerate their grab for talent.

Otherwise, as I say the next step for the Power is to continue to build talent. I dare say they are a free agent destination club, and could pick up a mature player or two over the next couple of seasons. They wouldn’t be in the market for the very top talent, given they already have a bunch of that on the list, but I’m talking a Taylor-Hunt-to-Richmond type of transaction.

A bottom six finish is still firmly in the frame for this season, given the Power still have Hawthorn and Fremantle on the slate (although St Kilda have perhaps the toughest run of any side remaining), which would give them a much more favourable draw, all things being equal. Regardless of their precise finishing position, they’ll be picking twice inside the top 30 at this season’s national draft.

So where to next for Port Adelaide? On to 2016.