AFL 2024: Port Adelaide didn’t walk away from Dan Houston trade, club says

Port Adelaide “pushed back” but never walked away from the controversial three-way trade that sent Dan Houston to Collingwood, according to Power list boss Chris Davies.

Davies said the abrupt halt the night before the deal went through on Wednesday was so the Power could try to “eke some more out of it”, but they ultimately decided it was the best possible trade.

Port Adelaide gave up its future first-round selection among a bundle of picks as it secured Gold Coast’s No. 13 pick and received Jack Lukosius, Rory Atkins and Collingwood’s Joe Richards in the deal.

Davies conceded the acquisitions were aimed at addressing a lack of “second-tier” mature-age players, but said Lukosius and Richards would help fix weaknesses in the forward half.

“We are a club, and unashamedly so, which has been tasked with retooling our group on the run,” Davies said.

“We brought two players in this year who we think can really help us in an area of the ground we need help in.

“The last couple of days of negotiations with the various teams (have been) about specifically Dan, and we’ve been talking all year about the challenge of having mature players from a second-tier perspective.

“We think Rory (Atkins) is better than that, but there’s no doubt that he’ll add something to the depth of our group.”

Davis said the deal was the best possible outcome for the Power, after they recognised Houston’s preference was to play for Collingwood rather than North Melbourne.

“That’s a tough one when these negotiations are pretty fluid throughout. We pushed back at that point. That didn’t mean for us that the deal was dead, but we certainly wanted to take some time to think about other ways the deal could be done, and other ways we might be able to eke some more out of it,” he said.

“We weren’t able to do it at that point in time, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to go through this next period of pick-trading and on the night, to see what else we can end up with through the entire trade and draft period.

“We’ve traded some pretty big players out at Port Adelaide, and we’ve always been good enough to end the period of time in a better position than when we started.”

The Power list manager said reports of Ivan Soldo’s dissatisfaction with his move to South Australia had been “overdone” as he denied there was any “awkwardness” after the ruckman failed to secure a trade to St Kilda.

He reiterated Soldo’s comments on social media that he had attended a wedding on the night of the Power’s best and fairest with the full support of the club.

“Ivan is a player who we’re actually almost pleased to be in a position where he wasn’t able to find something else, because we think it’s really important that Jordon Sweet and Dante Visentini still have competition for their spot,” Davies said.

“We clearly have the cap space … that’s not anything that we have an issue with right now, so Ivan Soldo coming back to the club is a good thing.

“Of course we need to work on how he settles in again, but that’s something that he’s also committed to, as I understand it based on some social media today.”