Power coach Mark Williams admitted he was apprehensive about the Kangaroos game and certainly relieved to get the four points. The return of Peter Burgoyne, the form of Chad Cornes, Brett Ebert and Nathan Krakouer and some of the fast exciting footy the team played certainly impressed the coach. In his post-match media conference, he declared that the revolution had well and truly begun and encouraged supporters to get on board and buy their season ticket / membership in advance of the upcoming Showdown. Here’s a full transcript of what he had to say.

Obviously coming to the game today against a team that has beaten us so often, we were very apprehensive about it. We thought that we had to fight it out. We saw that the Kangaroos dominated their game last week and were unlucky to lose. Having then watched Collingwood play so well against West Coast last night, it was pretty obvious that the Kangaroos were going to give us a really hard battle.

It was great for our club to be able to work their way through it. Halfway through last year we went down the path of putting young players in and giving them an opportunity to develop. That revolution that our membership people are selling to our supporters out there is really on.

To see how we’ve played, to see excitement, to see Krakouer come and step up and kick that last goal I think is vitally important for us. It really does that mean that people can jump on. I know that next week against the Crows it will be vitally important for our people to buy their season tickets and buy their memberships. We want the stadium to be filled only with Port Adelaide people similar to how it is when we play the Crows with their home game.

So anyone out there that’s listening (reading) to this, ring up on Monday (1300 GO POWER or sign up here on-line) and make sure you get on board because the club is moving forward, you can see the progress that we’ve made in a very short time is putting us in the right direction, and the efforts of the coaching staff and the leadership group of the club have been outstanding. Two from two is a great start for us, and we really look forward to building on that next week.

Mark, Krakouer’s last 15 minutes – he kicked one goal and set up two others was vital – for a guy that we/you thought wouldn’t play for a couple of years. How good was that?

Well, you know, the fact is that he was always going to be a good player. The North people (Kangaroos) would be saying he didn’t have much influence on the game, and that’s true for three quarters, but the cream comes to the top when you’re under pressure and at the end of the game he was quite fresh and what he does do is he believes in himself, so he took the opportunity to get a goal and set some stuff up and showed some great poise at the end of the game when there was great pressure, so that’s great for our club, and moving forward it sets us up for a long term player.

Mark your pace was evident again today with the Burgoyne brothers and Danyle Pearce, wasn’t it?

Yeah I thought it was exciting footy. The fact is that we didn’t finish off too well. I thought that half way through the third quarter we could have been up by ten goals. Even to the fact that Brett – he played as well as anybody today – but playing on in the goal square again and getting nothing for it, was a bit disappointing, because it probably would have put us six goals up at that stage. We hit the post a lot of times. There were a lot of things that didn’t quite go well. Sometimes that does get the morale of the side down and that momentum can change, so to still grind it out at the end, under a lot of pressure was great. You know North, I’m sure their supporters would be disappointed two weeks in a row now, but they talk about the Shinboner spirit, well that certainly shone through today, they just kept going at it, so I’m sure Dean will walk away disappointed but still with the understanding that his team has a lot to offer.

And pretty important to back the win against Fremantle up with a home win today?

Last week was really hot and this week was really hot again, think it was 27 (degrees) in the shade, so it’s hot out there and we really need to make sure we freshen up our players this week. Coming back from Perth and playing in the heat again, it’s a tough gig, it’s on a Sunday, so we must make sure that we and the players do everything right to be fresh. Obviously Adelaide are coming back from interstate, but it’s important for us to worry about ourselves and be fresh. It’s great to have the occasion of coming up against Adelaide. That will keep everyone’s mind on the job, that’s for sure.

What did you think of Peter Burgoyne’s game?

People have probably forgotten how important and how great a player Peter Burgoyne has been for our club. I’m sure Shaun and all the midfielders were rapt to have him back there. He showed great poise, hunted the ball and is a very exciting player.

Mark, was it more important for you to win that one under pressure, or would you have preferred to be that 10-goals up that you talked about?

Honestly, four points is four points, and at the end of the year noone really cares, they just add them up and we’ll take four points any way possible, but we will go and look at how many times we went inside-50 and what return we got for it. It’s work in progress, we’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do, we certainly don’t think that everything is rosy. There were a lot of players out there that didn’t touch the ball much today and we were disappointed with that. Tredrea played well on Thursday night and he’s some chance of playing this week, so we’ll look and see how he pulls up. And maybe we just need to give a couple of others a rest and play someone else, because game time into our young players is important and giving them opportunities to play under those conditions is vitally important for our club going forward.

Are you heartened by the amount of depth there is at the club at the moment, given Symes, Bentley and these sort of guys they were getting regular games in the latter half of last year and they’re now playing in the SANFL?

It’s great to see them playing well. I went and watched Westies and Sturt playing, and I think Sturt had five of our players playing, and we are really positive about how Sturt used them, gave them great opportunities. I thought Deluca played particularly well which was great for our ruck division. I’m thinking Westhoff is probably the player playing the best of any of our SANFL players and we didn’t know him this time last year, so you know it’s really positive. I thought Thomson was terrific and I thought Bentley was good and as you say Symes played well again last night. A lot of them got the opportunity because we decided to send players to have surgery and we made some tough decisions which didn’t make our bottom line look too good at the end of last year, but it was all money in the bank for the future and hopefully some of it is starting to pay off. Be assured we are nowhere near where we want to be, and there’s a lot of improvement left at our club

Is Tredrea a certain starter? Or is he a chance to play again with the Maggies?

No, he’s not. He’s some chance (to play with the Magpies).

Darryl Wakelin, was he dropped for match-up reasons or is he no longer a certain starter?

Without doubt he got a vote from all of the match committee last week. We thought he played particularly well. Certainly today was match-up driven. With four on the bench and with a hot day, you have to make sure you have some people to rotate on and off the bench and Darryl was basically going to play in one position. And we thought that due to the fact that we had some options down back, we should take those options. Chad Cornes played by far the best game he’s played this year and he’s back to his absolute sparkling form, so it was great to see Chad back in the form that everyone expects him to be.

What about Wakelin for the Showdown given Adelaide probably aren’t that tall?

They play three tall forwards, so he’s certainly a chance to come up. I think if you look at Shane (Wakelin) last year he played half the games and not the other half (for Collingwood). Darryl is very much aware where we’re going as a club and wanted to put his hand up to say ‘yeah, I’m still going to be here’. He sat in the box with us, he gave messages, he talked to the players in the breaks, so he was vitally important for us today and that’s great leadership that comes through as older players pass on the messages to the younger players.

Mark, it is great fun to see the long goal come back into the game, especially last week I guess. Do the players take it on by themselves or do you give them free reign for the long goal?

Percentages, just so you know, are a lot less if you’re trying to kick a goal from 70 metres out, but some go through and everyone remembers them. Today we probably kicked long inside-50 and eighty percent of the time they (Kangaroos) punched the ball through for a point, so you need to keep measuring the success of it, and working out the alternatives. I thought that we were too far one way and we adjusted to that, and I thought we made some good decisions after probably quarter time.