Port Adelaide senior coach Josh Carr will unveil another debutant this weekend, with mid-season recruit Alex van Wyk to make his AFL debut. 

Despite being challenged with injury this season, Carr has maintained positivity around exposing young players to AFL football, and improving the depth of his list.  

Speaking with the Adelaide media on Friday, Carr spoke about taking on Sydney, Jason Horne-Francis’ 100th game, and how van Wyk is flourishing at Alberton. 

Carr on Sydney this week 
“It obviously starts with giving ourselves a decent look through the midfield, getting inside our forward 50, hold it in there, and defensively, they're a team that's going to challenge us. But we’re looking forward to it as a group, we're looking forward to playing against a really good team. We’re learning a lot about ourselves in in these situations as a as a footy club. 

“We’ve got to take the space away for sure, so make it hard for them to get through. If you give Blakey and Warner and these guys opportunities with space, then then they're hard to stop.” 

Carr on tagging players 
“We do look at their group, and if there's anything we can take away. But you just touched on it, you shut one down, and there's a few more there to look after, so there's a challenge for a lot of individuals, but more importantly, it’s a challenge it for us as a team, how do we take that away from them?” 

Carr on the focus for the end of the season 
“Last week we went in with the focus of just resetting our team defence and trying to get back to making sure we are really hard to play against. With that, we still have to be conscious of the way that we move the footy and give ourselves an opportunity. But what we don't want to do is all of a sudden change everything in our game plan just because we've got players out. For us, we see this as an opportunity to keep our eye on our game plan and playing our way, rather than trying to do something because we have parts missing or whatever it is, to shut down an opposition team. So we feel that's important.” 

Carr on Jack Watkins going out with a hamstring injury 
“His last couple of weeks on the on the wing has looked good. He looks like he's he runs the patterns and he didn't look out of place there, so he looked like he was growing in that position. So one door shuts, another one opens, and Tommy Anastasopoulos comes in and gets an opportunity.” 

Carr on the late change 
“Yeah there is (some late selection drama). George (Mitch Georgiades) is out. He's got a virus and he's sick. So Alex van Wyk comes in for his first game. We had him missing a couple few weeks ago against Freo, and the guys came out and showed effort, and again, it's an opportunity for Alex to come in. So, disappointed obviously for George and he's really grown as a leader of our footy club to not have him out there. But on the other side of that, someone gets a to play their first game.” 

Carr on Alex van Wyk 
“His attitude towards making sure us as a footy club is getting better, like every conversation that you have, whether it's a disappointment from his games about him, either not giving his teammates first service around the stoppage, and but also his willingness to work at his game. He's one of the first here every morning since he's come here, obviously in the mid-season, and he keeps working really, really hard at his craft. So it's great to see him get some reward.” 

Carr on the challenge the SANFL side is having 
“Yeah, well that's the challenge down there at the moment. Obviously the injury list that we've got that affects the tier underneath us, and we're not as strong as we'd like to be at that level, but we've got a lot of players missing. So for us, we're not just trying to change everything to try and compete…we're trying to develop our game, and individually right now, if there's only six or seven down in that in that group in the SANFL, it's about those guys working really hard on their craft.” 

Carr on the depth of the list 
“Well, the great part about it is we are getting an opportunity to find players. There's always a lot of talk about our depth and not being there with the situation that we're in.I see the other side of it. I see that what we're doing is we're actually finding players and we're improving our depth by playing these guys. We wouldn't be in this situation with a Josh Lai and a Ewan Mackinlay and these guys and seeing that they're actually more than okay at AFL level, and for us, when we go into next year and touch wood, we're injury free, all of a sudden, our depth starts to look better.” 

Carr on Zak Butters’ injury recovery 
“We're not going to (take any) risk. That's with any of our players. We're not just going to put Zak out there if we feel like he's at risk of hurting himself again, so that's the approach. Look, he's made some obviously massive progress in that ankle. It's still a while away. More likely the last game than next week, but there's still a lot of water to go under the bridge.” 

Carr on Jason Horne-Francis’ 100th game 
“It’s obviously his 100th game this week. His journey's been pretty publicised. Obviously starting at North and then coming across, and just seeing his development as an individual, and I think everyone's seeing that in action now. One with the way that he's playing his football, but his leadership around the group has really grown. Really grown the last probably two or three months. He's always looking to get better. He's always looking for a challenge, and he's so coachable. That’s what we love about him. 

“I see him as a future leader at the footy club now. What level of that is, who knows? But the way he's going about it is week to week, the way he looks after himself, his preparation going in, and then that's flowing into his game. So, what leadership looks like in one year to two, three years, we don’t know. But the growth he's made in the last three to six months, let alone the last three to four years, has been enormous. 

“He’s had one of his best years. So that's a real credit to him because we all saw in pre-season, he wasn't out there. He hardly did any pre-season. Now he used the first three rounds as a pre-season, so that's a credit to him, but also a credit to our high performance team to have him ready to go.” 

Carr on playing three rucks this weekend 
“The three-headed monster! Yeah, look, one of them will spend a lot more time up forward as obviously taking George's place, and there's opportunity for really Viz and Wykky to probably spend a little bit more time in the ruck with Sweety in a rotation there. We always hold someone back, and over the last few weeks, we've actually held Viz back a fair bit and played a bit more ruck/bench rather than ruck/forward. So there's an opportunity for one of them to spend more time forward now.” 

Carr on Jase Burgoyne playing more inside mid time 
“I've seen growth. The opportunity that he's got to go inside and develop his game along with Bergman, over the last month to six weeks, he's always been really good in the contest and won his own footy. So for him, it's about consistency through the game. He's still growing in that area, which we're really positive about in the direction that he's going.”