Port Melbourne News

From the Leader Newspapers - www.localfooty.com
Reported by Paul Amy

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THE question has cropped up ever since the VFL took in AFL reserves teams in 2000.

Can an unaligned team win a flag?

No, is invariably the answer.

The thinking goes that a side of VFL players will always lack the fitness and class to overcome an opponent equipped with 12 AFL players.

Saade Ghazi said as much when he was coaching Port Melbourne, one of three so-called stand-alone teams in the VFL (Frankston and Tasmania also operate under their own steam).

Peter Banfield, then coaching Casey Scorpions, offered the same view a year earlier in a radio interview.

North Ballarat has come closest to doing it, reaching the grand final. But that was in the first year of the revamp, when there were 16 teams. As the competition settled and the standard rose, the Roosters floundered.

From the Herald-Sun
Reported by Chris Mitchell

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RED-HOT Port Melbourne will have a double incentive to win its ninth straight match when it travels to Frankston Oval today.

The third-placed Borough (11-3) will look to celebrate John Baird's 100th VFL game and 50th for the club with a win that would see it overtake second-placed Williamstown on the ladder.

Amazingly, the laid-back 28-year-old didn't know of the impending milestones until contacted by the Herald Sun.

The 192cm, 95kg defender started his VFL career with Box Hill, helping the club win its only premiership in 2001, before he was drafted to North Melbourne. He played 46 games under Denis Pagan and later Dean Laidley.

Baird said he was disappointed he did not play more games for the Roos.

From the Sunday Age
Reported by Michael Sharkie

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PORT Melbourne sounded an ominous warning to the VFL competition yesterday, and looms as an enormous stumbling block for premiership favourite Williamstown, after dismantling the Bendigo Bombers at Port by 85 points.

The win was the seventh on end for the Borough, and came at a high cost for Bomber Courtney Johns, who is likely to miss the rest of the season with a suspected anterior cruciate ligament tear. He landed awkwardly after flying for a mark in the second term.

Although it is one of two stand-alone clubs in the VFL, Port Melbourne is hardly a team cobbled together with local talent. Nine players in yesterday\'s game have had recent AFL experience, including Dylan McLaren (Carlton), Cory McGrath (Carlton), and David Spriggs (Sydney). While Bendigo\'s young AFL-listed players looked very good at times, they ultimately fell victim to a more polished outfit that is growing in confidence.