Choco Uncut – Round 7

[RustyCage]

Choco Uncut – Round 7
9:18:56 AM Tue 16 May, 2006
Mark Williams
Port Adelaide Football Club

Jacob Surjan looked hungry when on the ball and was prepared to get the ball. Can we expect to see more of him in a midfield role this season?
- Jason

MARK WILLIAMS: He’s played on ball at the Port Adelaide Magpies and got lots of possessions. From the limited opportunities he gets at AFL level, if he continues to play like that he’ll get more and more. That’s how Danyle Pearce started and all the good on-ball players start that way – getting small opportunities and taking their chances so yes, hopefully we do see more of him in the midfield this year.

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Who is to blame for this poor play? Is it the players or is it the coaching staff? Or is it both?
- Mark Sarunic


MARK WILLIAMS: It’s always been very much that we win together and lose together. No-one is dodging responsibility. We obviously don’t have the same team as we have had in the past and we’re trying to build a side that is very, very talented and able to stick at their tasks for a long time and at the moment we’re not showing that.

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Some of our young players look lost ie not knowing who to pick up / switch to. Is this the case and is it talking that is missing ... or something else?
- Colin Whyte

MARK WILLIAMS: The game is a lot different to how it is played in the SANFL where the young players have generally been playing prior to coming into our side. There’s a lot of good players in the AFL and the coaches of both sides are using quite a few different tactics, so people have to pick up on them as quickly as possible. It’s a lot easier for them when our senior players are playing well so we need to get them playing well as well.

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The playing group don't seem to be as committed to the hard things as in previous years. Have we lost confidence in each other?
- Jan Hayes

MARK WILLIAMS: Every time you lose and have a string of losses, it looks bad. Certainly the confidence isn’t as high as when you win, there’s no doubt about that. I’d agree that without question a lot of our hardness has gone out of our side. Starting with Primus, James, Francou, Pickett, Hardwick and Carr. They’re outstanding, hard players and are very hard to replace and we’re looking at how we can do that as quickly as possible because we know that that’s how we want to play at Port Adelaide.

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Against the Bulldogs our midfield failed to kick long to our tall forwards, why?
- Anthony Whyte

MARK WILLIAMS: We actually had a lot of long kicks. More than the Bulldogs did. Lade, Chad and Thurstans all marked from long kicks inside 50 but we didn’t do it as many times as we hoped. On the occasions it actually went in there long and they marked it, it looked good so it would have been nice to have done it more. We should also remember our forwards were out marked quite a few times as well given the fact that they had extra numbers back there.

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Shaun Burgoyne was great in the midfield. He has the skills, especially at the clearances to become a great midfielder, but does he have the tank?
- chris

MARK WILLIAMS: He’s improving in that area. Obviously he’s got a lot of speed but his general fitness is improving and the more times he gets in there, the better he will get.

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How are you going to make sure we get more from Daniel Motlop and Warren Tredrea?
- Mario
This answer is taken from Mark Williams’ media conference on Monday.

MARK WILLIAMS: I gave Daniel a couple of votes in the best-and-fairest for the St Kilda game. He had a hand in seven of our goals and was fantastic that night. I have to really look at where he is at physically, I suspect Daniel is actually injured. Having no real long term relationship with him it’s hard to establish that sort of stuff. Coming to a new club, he wants to put it on himself to do the right thing and play all the time. I’ll have to generally look at seeing if he’s right to play because he’s showing nothing compared to the early part of our pre-season when he just dominated the forward line.

Warren is another one we will have to consider. Being the captain and having huge pride and wanting to drag the team along with him… let’s be serious about it, he’s won games off his own back in the last five years. He can’t do that at the moment and that’s frustrating him. It may well be the best thing for him to give him a couple of weeks off so we’ll consider that again this week as well.