Port Melbourne coach Gary Ayres believes his side is well-placed for another assault on the VFL premiership.
Ayres says is side is "quietly confident" it can take the next step and make amends for last season's 45-point grand final loss to North Ballarat.
“Can we go one better? Well, I’d like to think so because that’s what your aim is – to win a premiership. I believe I have the group to do that," Ayres told SEN.
"They are quietly confident about what they can do."
Despite a few hiccups with injury, Ayres was pleased with his group's summer training and the fresh talent at his disposal.
“We’ve had a fairly solid pre-season. Unfortunately, we’ve run into a few little injuries but we can’t control them," Ayres said on SEN.
“We’ve recruited as well as we possibly can. We’ve picked up both Adrian DeLuca and Fabian DeLuca so that improves our height.
“We’ve picked up Nathan Batsanis who came across from the Box Hill Hawks. Nathan has extremely good endurance.
“Blake Grima played about 15 games for the Kangaroos. He’s a hard and aggressive onballer."
Ayres said he was also happy with his team's practice match form, albeit that the results "not meaning too much".
“We had a good game against Sandringham two weeks ago in pretty trying conditions. We played Frankston and ended up losing by a point on the scoreboard. We probably did a few things wrong in the final few minutes.
“You certainly have to get out of them as much as you can, I still saw a few positives for us to round off our preparation.”
Port Melbourne is yet to elect a captain to replace the outgoing Luke Cotchett and Ayres expects a decision to be made soon.
“We asked every played to vote on our leadership grounp. We’ll go in with six players in our leadership group," Ayres revealed.
"John Baird, Ryan McMahon, Cory McGrath were in it last year and I would anticipate Toby Pinwill, who had a super year last year, Adrian Bonnaddio, who kicked 60 goals as our power forward and Sam Pleming, one of our top defenders, will be in the mix."
“Whoever gets the job will do a very good job I’m sure."
Ayres also praised the efforts of new assistant coach Simon Goosey, who joined the club after a stellar career in the Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League.
“He’s been terrific with the forward line, that’s his expertise," he said.
“Simon’s been a great acquisition to the club, he enjoys his footy.
“He’s done some forward scouting for the Western Bulldogs, he done some forward line work for Hawthorn last year
“I think he has a lot to offer. Whether he gets the opportunity and how people perceive him I’m not sure because sometimes you’ve got to have that AFL or VFL experience
“Simon was a MPNFL champion for a long-time and coached I think four premierships out of eight attempts. He has a fairly enviable record."
Last Modified on 24/03/2009 18:19