Portland coach Jarrod Holt expects gun forward Tom Sharp to play more games for Tigers in 2023

Gun forward Tom Sharp, who kicked 82 goals for the Tigers in last year's Hampden league season, played his first senior match of the season on Saturday against Camperdown. The former VFL Bulldog snagged a goal in the Tigers' 58-point loss after a standalone appearance for the club's reserves team in round three.

"He'll play a bit," Holt said of the key forward.

"He won't play every week. He wasn't going to play at all. He was a bit of a late call up for this week he was going to play in the reserves then we had someone pull out last minute so we slipped him in.

"He's pretty underdone too so he'll take a little bit to get going but he's such a good player. Even though he's a bit underdone he's a great team man, it's never about him so he'll help the other boys as much as he can, he's happy to be out there.

"Whether he has much of an impact himself, he still definitely helps us so great to have him back around the club."

Even if Sharp isn't playing in the same rich vein of form, Holt knows one thing for certain.

"I'm sure opposition coaches would rather him not playing," he said.

Saturday's loss to Camperdown was the Tigers sixth of the season, with their one triumph a 21-point win against Hamilton in round three.

At three-quarter-time the Tigers and the Magpies were level at 34-points apiece before the latter caught fire in the final term, kicking 11 goals to the Tigers' two.

The loss came in a similar fashion to the side's round six game, where they led Cobden by eight points at the final break before conceding eight goals to one in the final quarter.

"We're happy that we're obviously being a lot more competitive over the last month, rather than the first couple of weeks, we just were never in those games," Holt said. "So we're happy with that, it's just a bit frustrating the last two weeks we've just got significantly rolled in the last quarter."

Holt said he isn't quite sure why his side are getting severely outgunned in fourth quarters.

"I'm scratching my head a little bit with it," he said.

"Maybe we're a little bit underdone, we probably didn't have an exceptional pre-season, we definitely didn't.

"But I don't think it's just that, I think maybe a bit of lack of confidence in the boys, just knowing they can win those games in those situations. Whereas Camperdown probably just expected they were going to win."

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