PORTLAND’S up-and-coming senior footballers return to action Friday Night with the under-23 off-season competition kicking off in Warrnambool.

This year’s Hampden Football League season was abandoned after 12 of a scheduled 18 rounds, with no finals taking place due to the coronavirus pandemic, and in a bid to make up for lost time, six clubs will play in an under-23 tournament over the next five weeks.

Portland, who will be coached by Daniel Jackson, are squaring off against five other Hampden Football League clubs – Koroit, Warrnambool, Terang Mortlake, North Warrnambool and South Warrnambool.

Matches were originally scheduled to be two 20-minute halves, but that’s been extended to two 25-minute halves.

Jackson said it was going to be interesting to see the varying levels of senior experience from team to team.

“I don’t think we’ll really have a good overall idea of how the competition feels until we get this first match out of the way, because it’s all so new,” he said.

“With our team for example, we’re going to be fielding mostly players with senior experience.

“We’ve only got a handful of under-18.5s involved at this stage, and the majority of them have played senior footy anyway.

“I think regardless of how the other teams look though, it’s going to be a great brand of footy to watch.

“Because of the age of the players I think it’s going to be really hard and fast to start with, and then it should slow down and soften up a bit as a match goes on.

“Because of the shorter overall time of the match too the intensity should stay pretty high – although we don’t want to see anyone get hurt going too hard in a preseason match.

“We’re really happy with our line-up, and we’ve even got a few players from neighbouring clubs in the South West District competition joining in too, like Zac Stuchbery from Tyrendarra, and I think that’s great.

“Mixes things up for everyone, makes it really interesting.”

Matches will be held at the Deakin University campus in Warrnambool, with Portland’s contest against North Warrnambool Friday night beginning at 7.50pm.

There’s plenty of prize money on the line too, with $10,000 going to the winner of the grand final on December 10 and $2000 going to the runner-up.