FORWARD Todd Marshall is chasing consistency after a break-out AFL campaign in 2022.
Marshall booted a career-high 45 goals and shouldered much of the tall forward load as teammate Charlie Dixon missed close to half the season with injury.
The 24-year-old and his teammates ended their training program for the year with a gut busting pre-season camp on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast on Friday afternoon but will go into 2023 with a goal to replicate and improve on what he was able to produce in 2022.
And he hopes having Dixon fit and firing and getting some games into mercurial small forward Orazio Fantasia will see the whole forward line improve.
“I want to be that consistent forward. I don’t want it to be a one-off year,” Marshall said.
“Coming back, I’ve got myself in a good position, I’m really clear on what my role is for the team and how to do that to the best of my ability so going into the season I’m really excited we’ve been able to add a few pieces to the forward line and get a few back in Orazio (Fantasia).
“The match play today was really fun with that forward group.”
Marshall is also excited about the addition of former West Coast forward Junior Rioli, who has already shown his talent in game play at training.
“Junior has been flying,” Marshall said. “He’s so smart.”
“We lose Robbie (Gray) to retirement but Junior has got very similar smarts and plays the game the right way so training out there in the forward line has been great.”
Port Adelaide players had lengthy running sessions combined with team-building activities across the six-day camp in hot and humid conditions.
The punishing schedule saw players cover 52 kilometres at training while fitting in several game-plan education sessions along with a bit of fun.
“We’ve just ticked over 50 kilometres for the week,” Marshall explained. “We had a pretty big session on the Sunday as soon as we landed to get the bodies going and then main sessions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Main sessions have been 12-plus kilometres and we had about three or four gym sessions in there as well.
“It was a massive week for us, our biggest training load for a fair while.
“We had a meeting on the Sunday when we got here about the three main things we wanted to get out of this (camp) and that was some education around our game style, build our connection as a group and work hard on the track and in the gym.
“Over these six days, it’s been really hard work but I think we build on our connection and we learnt a lot about our game style for next year.”
Players ended the camp with an open training session attended by more than 50 supporters and stayed around the sign autographs and pose for photos.
Marshall said it was nice to have such great support so far from home.
“We’ve had three or four open sessions back in Adelaide for our fans and being up on the camp it’s a great chance to get our Sunny Coast fans here as well,” he smiled.
“Being able to integrate with our members and fans again is great and it bring a lot of passion to our club. “
Another thing that had Marshall smiling was seeing gun recruit Jason Horne-Francis back running on Friday after significant surgery on the back of his legs.
The young star was moving well on the boundary.
“It’s been tough for him,” Marshall explained.
“He had surgery as soon as he got to the club but today he was out on the track and it’s going to be a slow burn for him in terms of building himself up but we can’t wait to have him in our team.
“There’s a reason he wanted to come back and we love having him in the team so I’m looking forward to it.”
Port Adelaide players will resume training on Monday 9 January.
