ANOTHER pre-season ends, this one with anticipation replacing the anxiety of the previous summer. Port Adelaide's strategic purchases in the October trade window have created eagerness beyond Alberton as to all Ivan Soldo, Jordan Sweet, Esava Ratugolea and Brandon Zerk-Thatcher can offer to a team that has repeatedly competed but needs to take that next step to contend in September.
Putting up two pre-seasons wins - against Adelaide and Fremantle at Alberton - rather than two summer defeats - to West Coast and the Dockers in Perth last year - has significantly changed the tone on Port Adelaide's start to its 28th AFL campaign. But the narrative does not alter around the team nor senior coach Ken Hinkley, who might as well seek a trademark or copyright on the term "pressure".
Expectation is high at Alberton and among those in the all-powerful seats in AFL media where the contenders are rated and the pretenders are handicapped. And so there should be high hopes for this new Port Adelaide squad that has abundant talent, particularly in the midfield that is led by the rookie leadership pair of captain Connor Rozee and his eager lieutenant Zak Butters.
This is the season that demands consistency more than ever. Consistency in performance will be vital is a premiership race that has more prospects for the top eight than in any other year this century.
But the greater test of consistency will come off the field, in the halls of AFL headquarters in Melbourne where Port Adelaide became the focal point of the pre-season with the report of forward Sam Powell-Pepper for his high bump of Adelaide defender Mark Keane in the trial game at Alberton.
The resulting four-match ban from the AFL tribunal was generally expected at a time when head-high contact - and the threats posed by repeated head knocks and the resulting concussion - has most contact sports, not just Australian football, consumed by the torment of mounting legal action.
The game is far from its pivot of 2005 when Hall of Fame premiership player and coach Robert Walls watched Port Adelaide powerhouse Byron Pickett bump - in Walls' eyes quite fairly - Adelaide ruckman Rhett Biglands in the Showdown semi-final at Football Park, West Lakes.
Walls noted in his television commentary that there was a responsibility on Biglands to be aware of who was around him and what could happen to him in a contest. Today, the AFL has made it very clear the responsibility rests on the shoulders (and hips) of a player such as Powell-Pepper when approaching a contest.
The words of AFL advocate Lisa Hannon KC at the tribunal are to echo for some time across all of Australian football: "The responsibility lies with the player to avoid contact with the head ... the (four-match) suspension is something that in part serves as a function of general deterrence and sends a message to the playing community."
The message coming back from every aspect of Australian football - even those remnants from an era when bumps were to be expected as brutal moments - is just as strong: If Sam Powell-Pepper's case marked the much-expected tough line in the sand from AFL House, the winds of time across Season 2024 should not erode nor wipe out this marker ... particularly after a preliminary final.
Consistency is a huge demand on many this season.
