PORT ADELAIDE will have a couple of historic firsts when it takes to Adelaide Oval to play the Crows at SANFL level on Saturday afternoon.
It will be the first double header between the sides at the venue, and Port Adelaide will be giving a league debut to Jase Burgoyne – the son of dual SANFL/AFL premiership player Peter Burgoyne – after being granted access to a father-son prospect playing at a different SANFL club for the first time.
The 17-year-old is in his draft year and Port Adelaide has first right to him under the AFL’s father-son rules.
It also has the chance to play him at SANFL level for a month before he has to return to Woodville-West Torrens, where he has been a dominant player in the SANFL under 18 competition in the last two seasons.
“He’s in his draft year and plays at Woodville-West Torrens and there’s an AFL ruling that AFL clubs can get their NGA players and approved father-son players to play in their state league team for a month,” Port Adelaide SANFL and Next Generation Academy Manager Shane Grimm explained.
“We’ve been given permission by the AFL and SANFL and we also thank Woodville-West Torrens for being comfortable with Jase playing with us for a month as well.
“He’s been involved in our program anyway. He comes in weekly and sees (NGA coach) Justin Westhoff but to have him for an entire month training with us and playing three games lets us have a look at him and find areas of his game that he perhaps needs to improve.
“It also helps our recruiters and list managers decide whereabouts in the draft he might be claimed and what we might need to do should they decide we want him on our list.”
Jase Burgoyne’s father Peter Burgoyne won a premiership with the Magpies in 1998 before being a key part of the Power’s premiership success in 2004 in a career which saw him play 270 games for the club.
Jase’s uncle is fellow 2004 premiership star Shaun, and his grandfather Peter Snr also represented the club.
His brother Trent Burgoyne is an AFL rookie with Port Adelaide and made his SANFL debut this season before suffering a hamstring injury, which has him currently sidelined.
Grimm said the younger Burgoyne brother possessed similar attributes to his father and uncle.
“He plays on ball with the Eagles Under 18s at the moment but he’ll probably play wing/half back for us,” he said.
“He finds the ball a lot, he’s got clean hands and uses the ball well.
“He’s a different type of player to Trent, who is probably more explosive. Jase accumulates more of the ball and he will need to improve his work rate to play at league level so it’ll be good to see him do that while playing with us.”
It is the first time Port Adelaide has been given permission to have a father-son or NGA player feature for the club at SANFL level.
If Burgoyne had already played a senior game for the Eagles, as Lachie Jones had last season, he would not have been eligible to also play for Port.
“We tried a few years ago to get access to Martin Frederick and Kai Pudney, we also tried with Jackson Mead and it didn’t quite work out so this is the first time we’ve been able to do it,” Grimm explained.
“We might get another opportunity in a few years with more father-sons coming through including Jase and Trent’s younger brother Rome, there are some Montgomery boys and even Darryl Wakelin’s son is coming through.
“It’s great for our people to see some of these names coming through our club again and while there is no guarantee we draft any or all of them, it helps us, especially if they are talented players, to pick up a player earlier than we might have otherwise been able to in the AFL draft.”
Port Adelaide’s SANFL game against the Crows gets underway at Adelaide Oval at 3:35pm before the AFL Showdown from 7:10pm.
