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.
“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 particular moment, but that doesn’t mean we won’t try to see what else we can get during the trade and draft process by pick-trading tomorrow and tonight.
“We have been good enough to finish the time period in a better position than when we started, and we have traded some pretty big players out at Port Adelaide.”
The manager of the Power List denied that there was any “awkwardness” following the ruckman’s failure to secure a trade to St Kilda, saying that reports of Ivan Soldo’s discontent with his move to South Australia had been “overdone.”
With the club’s full support, he reaffirmed Soldo’s remarks on social media that he had gone to a wedding the night of the Power’s best and fairest.
We believe it’s crucial that Jordon Sweet and Dante Visentini continue to compete for their spot, so we’re actually kind of happy that Ivan is a player who couldn’t find anything else, Davies said.
It’s obvious that we have the cap space. Ivan Soldo returning to the club is a wonderful thing because we don’t currently have a problem with that.
“Obviously, we need to work on helping him reintegrate, but from what I’ve seen on social media today, he’s also committed to that.”
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