PORTLAND will make the trip to Mortlake tomorrow to face off against a revamped Terang-Mortlake Bloods outfit in their first Hampden Football League Super Saturday fixture of the season.

In an all-day affair, every Tigers Hampden team from the under-12s right up to the seniors will play, with proceedings getting underway at 9am, while the senior game will kick off at 4.30pm.

Portland senior coach Jarrod Holt said that in the past he felt the club had played in “too many” of these kinds of fixtures, but added that it’s still a good initiative for the club to be involved in.

“We’re happy to play a couple of them, obviously they’ll return the favour to us later in the season, and I know it helps with the juniors not having to head back over there on the Sunday,” Holt said.

The Portland senior side will be coming off their first win of the season back on Anzac Day against Hamilton, albeit that will have been 11 days ago when this match gets underway.

Nonetheless, Holt said his group is still feeling good after the win and will take a lot of confidence into the match.

“I think it’s given us a lot of confidence that what we’re trying to do here can work, it sets us up well to be super competitive as the season progresses,” he said.

“It’s been a funny start to the season, between starting and then having a week off and then the Anzac game meaning we’ve had two Saturdays off.”

Terang-Mortlake put together a very strong contingent during the off-season, with their major addition being 100-game AFL player Lewis Taylor, along with former VFL footballer Scott Carlin.

“They’ll be strong, they had some really good young guys last season and now they’ve topped up with some elite-level talent,” Holt said.

“They’ll push every side this season.”

The key to the game for the Tigers is how they start, and you don’t need to look any further than their first three matches of the season.

The Warrnambool and Koroit fixtures saw the Tigers taken out of contention early as their opposition was able to jump out the blocks far better.

Whereas against the Roos, Portland got out to as good a start as you could ask for with a goal from a centre clearance inside 30 seconds.

“We just need to be in the game early and put our opponents under some pressure,” Holt said.

“(The Hamilton game) showed it’s not beyond us to have a good start, we can give ourselves every chance if we keep our pressure up and get early shots on goal.”