West Coast's John Worsfold has endorsed his assistant Scott Burns as a potential candidate to become Port Adelaide's next permanent coach following the Eagles' convincing 48-point win over the Power at AAMI Stadium on Sunday.
Norwood-reared Burns, a former Collingwood captain and long-serving Magpies stalwart, has become a fixture in West Coast's coach's box since his' 2008 retirement and was red-hot favourite to win the Adelaide coaching job, which ultimately went to Brenton Sanderson at the end of last year.
Worsfold believes Burns has all the necessary attributes, and will succeed if he is given a senior role.
"Scott will be a very good senior coach when he feels he's ready to take that role on," Worsfold said.
"It's not really for me to say whether he's ready or not. It's up to him.
"Just look up leadership in the dictionary and copy it out – the usual things, he's honest, got strong integrity, and (is) a good leader."
Worsfold, Burns and co engineered the comprehensive victory, in which the foundations were laid during a dominant first half.
Kept to a single goal at half-time, Port challenged hard in the third term and fought it out until the final siren, but the Eagles never looked like surrendering in a dour contest, which had few sparkling moments.
"It wasn't a game of highlights I don't think (or) of real slick ball movement," Worsfold said. "But when we had our opportunities I thought we did really well to go forward and score.
"For big patches of the game, it wasn't that pretty to watch.
"In the third quarter I felt Port's intensity was still up and ours dropped a little bit, which was disappointing.
"We addressed that at three quarter-time, the players were aware of it, and ramped it back to where they knew it had to be in the last quarter.
"We still want to improve in a lot of areas.
"We're not playing our best football right now, but it's not as though it is miles away.?
The Eagles didn't emerge unscathed injury-wise.
Hard-edged stopper Patrick McGinnity appeared to struggle at times after copping a body knock, while midfielder Andrew Gaff retreated to the rooms at one stage with a hip complaint, before running the game out.
Adam Selwood sustained concussion during a first-quarter 'friendly fire' collision with team-mate Jacob Brennan.
Worsfold is hopeful the experienced defender will be available for the potentially season-defining blockbuster against Collingwood at Patersons Stadium this Saturday.
"We've had dozens of concussions over my time coaching here," Worsfold said. "We have a great protocol that we work through so it will be treated like they all have been.
"Concussions in the AFL are treated extremely seriously.
"The doc said at quarter-time we could give Adam another five minutes to see how he comes around and whether we release him to go back on.
"But we felt, the doc and myself, that was unfair on Adam so we decided to sub him out then.
"Now it's normal protocol – we follow that. Most times players come up ready to go the next week, occasionally they don't."