Much of Wakelin’s final year in football was dedicated to mentoring his apprentices Troy Chaplin and Alipate Carlile. Now it's time for the duo to forge their own careers.
Carlile, who is expected to replace Wakelin at full-back, played nine games last season before being dropped to make way for the 261-game veteran in the preliminary final.
The strongly built 20-year-old says the new-look defence will need to lift to cover the losses of Wakelin and Wilson.
“People like myself, Chappy [Chaplin], Toby [Thurstans] and Petters [Michael Pettigrew] will all have to step up our leadership roles in defence next year without Darryl [Wakelin] marshalling us back there,” he said.
“We’ll have to learn a lot from guys like Peter and Shaun Burgoyne and also Chad Cornes, who have played a lot of footy in defence, because we’re such a young group.”
In the latter part of last year, Chaplin, who has already been touted as a future club captain, and Peter Burgoyne helped transform the unheralded Power defence into a running machine.
Port Adelaide was the second-highest scoring team after 22 rounds in 2007 with much of that offensive drive originating in defence.
“I gained a lot of confidence in the last five or six weeks of the year,” Chaplin said.
“I think also having Peter Burgoyne back there definitely helps because he plays that attacking game.”
Chaplin plays with the same mentality as most of the Power defenders: cover your man first, but attack whenever possible.
“When you’ve got guys like Michael Pettigrew and Jacob Surjan who can carry and run with the footy, you start to play like them and I was lucky enough to get on the end of a few balls last year,” Chaplin said.
The 21-year-old picked up 32 touches across half-back in the preliminary final win over the Kangaroos.
“The first thing for me is to beat my man and if I can do that and also get a bit of the ball, I’ll play every week,” Chaplin said.
“Nowadays, if you turn the footy over in the midfield, the ball comes straight back very quickly and you haven’t got a chance to get back, but usually it comes down to how you use the ball out of the back line."
The young defender learned a lot last year, now he needs to apply those lessons throughout the year.
“This season, for me, it’s all about consistency. I think at the start of last year I struggled, but towards the end of the year I became a bit more consistent. Consistency is really what we all [the defenders] have to get into our games, especially without Darryl and Wilbur [Michael Wilson] there, because the team will need us.”
