AFL investigator queries new Port deal
via Steve Larkin, AAP September 11, 2013, 8:13 pm
Port Adelaide boss Keith Thomas says the club s revised structure doesn t break any AFL laws.
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Port Adelaide say they have nothing to fear despite the AFL's salary cap investigator flagging concerns about the club's revamped structure.
The concerns of AFL investigator Ken Wood were disclosed in an email mistakenly released to media by Port's football operations manager Peter Rohde on Wednesday.
From next season, Port will effectively field a reserves side in South Australia's second-tier competition, the SANFL.
But Wood expressed concern after being alerted by an un-named club, suspected to be Port's bitter home-town rivals Adelaide, to aspects of the Power's reserves deal.
Port will create several youth academies in a revised structure from next season. But AFL rules prohibit any AFL club having a direct coaching influence on footballers aged 18 or under.
Port chief executive Keith Thomas said his club "clearly understood" that rule.
"They (the AFL) don't want an AFL club having access to under-age players and hiding them inside the system, and that is not our intention at all," Thomas told reporters on Wednesday.
Thomas will meet Wood next week to allay any concern.
"It is all above board ... we have no issues at all - I guarantee you," Thomas said.
Port and the Crows are the last AFL clubs to form reserves teams, ending the current system where their players overlooked for AFL selection play for any of nine different SANFL teams.
Both Port and the Crows argued the system disadvantaged them, because their footballers in the SANFL were forced to play under different coaching styles and demands than at their AFL clubs.
The Crows last month agreed to form their own reserves team to compete in the SANFL.
Port effectively did the same this week in a deal complicated by the club already having an entity in the SANFL - the Port Adelaide Magpies.
From next season, all of Port's AFL-listed players who miss AFL selection will play for the Magpies.
