Port Adelaide CEO Keith Thomas speaks to media. Photo: Sarah Reed. Source: News Corp Australia
Port Adelaide is learning the lesson from its darkest hour on the national stage with Power chief executive Keith Thomas seeking ways to beat the AFL circuit-breakers on dynasties.
"We must never experience the 'fall of the cliff' syndrome of 2008-11 again," Thomas said referring to the Power's collapse from 2007 grand finalist to holding the wooden spoon in the last round of 2011.
During that nightmare, that preceded Thomas' appointment as chief executive, the Power won just 29 of 88 home-and-away games and the Port Adelaide Football Club's place in the AFL was put at risk by financial crises.
So while the Power seeks to find its second AFL flag from its impressive current player list, Thomas has charged list manager Jason Cripps to find the next squad to keep Port Adelaide in the premiership race - as Sydney has done for the past 20 years and Geelong is trying today.
"I want to know what our player list looks like in four-to-five years," Thomas said in explaining his part in list-management at Alberton. "It may sound presumptuous, but I have asked Jason Cripps: 'How do we transition out of this bubble?'
"This player group is going to be pretty good - from an age profile - for the next four to five years. But how do we get to the next point? How do we never fall off the cliff again?
"So there has to be a lot of forward thinking - and decision making now. Conscious decisions need to be made now.
"That is the untold story of list management - the pressure on list managers and the sophistication required to get that right."
This process challenges Cripps and new Power football chief Chris Davies to make strategic list-management decisions in retaining players, chasing free agents and in the annual trade market each October. And Davies' work in managing the football department budgets at Alberton continues to hinge on Thomas' commercial team delivering new revenue streams to fund coach Ken Hinkley's program.
No greater lesson stands out from the 2008-11 disaster at Port Adelaide than the failure to invest in the football team.
"In the past three years we have had significant growth in the footy program to get it right," Thomas said. "Because if you are not playing good footy, nothing else works."
As new Adelaide coach Phil Walsh has noted in the past week, the non-Victorian AFL clubs crave recognition in the Melbourne environment. But it also works in reverse with that hard-earn respect in the AFL's traditional market carrying heavy burdens of expectation from Victorian critics.
Port Adelaide returns to Melbourne tomorrow - for the first time since its preliminary final loss to AFL premier Hawthorn at the MCG in late September - after losing its opening games in Perth (to Fremantle) and at Adelaide Oval (to Sydney). The game against North Melbourne at Etihad Stadium carries the "expectation tag" for a team that started the season as a premiership fancy and is 0-2 today.
"We're aware of (the expectation) and how it affects the dynamic of the (playing) group," Thomas responded in his interview in Melbourne with radio SEN this week. "We're not avoiding it or hiding from it. We're embracing it. That expectation has to have some impact, but we hope we can handle it.
"We also know we have not done anything yet (such as play in a grand final). If the team is healthy and playing well, we know we are difficult to handle.
"We also know it is really, really hard to win in this competition. We have a balanced view of that."
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