Wanganeen out again
2:29:26 PM Fri 21 May, 2004
Alan Shiell
Sportal
Port Adelaide’s injury woes have continued with Gavin Wanganeen forced to withdraw from the team to play Richmond at AAMI Stadium on Saturday night.
He was ruled out on Friday after being examined by Port’s club doctor before training.
It is the second successive match Wanganeen will miss because of back spasms. He was also a late withdrawal against the Kangaroos at Telstra Dome last Sunday.
Wanganeen is expected to resume against Geelong at AAMI Stadium on Sunday week – for his 300th senior appearance, including pre-season matches and state-of-origin fixtures, to qualify for AFL life membership.
Experienced defender Damien Hardwick has replaced Wanganeen in Port’s team to tackle the Tigers. Hardwick will be playing his first AFL match this season after recovering from knee and ankle injuries.
Port coach Mark Williams said he assumed Hardwick would not be 100 per cent fit.
“But he’s done some good training so if we can use him for a half to three quarters that’ll be good,” he said.
“In the past, we certainly wouldn’t have made that decision. We would have made him play a couple of games in the SANFL, but the alternatives to it… probably Damien’s the best one to have for our side at the moment.”
Williams agreed with suggestions that, injury-wise, this was the ‘toughest time’ of his coaching career.
“The fact is a lot of them are senior, well-established players and vital to our set-up,” he said. “We normally go into a game hoping to kick 20. Well, we probably hope to kick 15 this time.
“It takes us down a little. Last week we showed we were very uncompetitive in one quarter, something we haven’t been for a long time, and we don’t want it to happen again.
“The players have been made very much aware of it. The players are very disappointed about their efforts in that (third) quarter (0.1 to the Kangaroos’ 10.6), and we hope to get four very competitive quarters this week.
“We’re confident the 22 who are selected will have a real crack at it.”
Williams said Port needed to ‘hang tough for three or four weeks to get some players back with some form under their belts’.
“As you saw at the start of the year after six rounds (when Port was 1-5), we were a very, very good side and we’re a very, very good club,” he said.
“I’m sure some teams would be really lining up to play us right now, but we’re still confident we can get a win this week and we’re confident we can weather this three or four hard weeks of not having our No. 1 choices.
“When we get them back, we’ll be ready to take on the world.
“We’re asking supporting players to do leading roles, and we need to be smart enough to not over-harshly judge them because pretty soon we’re going to get the leading roles back and they’re going to play some fantastic cameos for us.
“We’re not hiding the fact that some guys have to step up and live up to their potential because when they play well, it really leads a long way towards us winning.”
Asked what Port would do about Richmond’s star forward Matthew Richardson, Williams said: “We hope to stop the supply. We’ve been working feverishly on ball-ups and throw-ins and stationaries to stop the ball getting there because they create an open forward line, they get it to him and there’s no chance of stopping him.”
And Williams made a special plea to Port’s supporters to be at Saturday night’s match.
“We love playing at AAMI Stadium – we enjoy being here,” he said. “I’m thinking that probably the last year or so, our supporters may have thought, ‘aw well, we’ll just turn up and Port will win’.
“This is going to be a huge battle and we need everyone sitting in the seats yelling our names and getting our players over the line. A lot of the young players need that sort of support and I’m really imploring the supporters and members to get here and make sure it’s another tough night for Richmond at AAMI Stadium.”
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