SOMETIMES you just have to believe.

Like on Good Friday in 2019 - that night in Western Australia where Port Adelaide overcame a two-game losing streak, an in-form West Coast that had a 13-3 win-loss record at the new Perth Stadium and came up with a novel game to defy an opponent that was "owning" Ken Hinkley's crew with six wins from seven matches. "Dirty ball," they called it.

Now it is Easter Sunday, a day celebrated for the miracle of a resurrection that amounts to "new life".

And Port Adelaide needs all of the above for a win that would assume Biblical proportions.

As with Good Friday in 2019, no-one outside the battered four walls at Alberton would believe there is a miracle, let alone a simple win in a football game, on the cards this Easter Sunday. After all, Port Adelaide is 0-4 (for the first time since 2008), the opponent is on its home deck at the MCG - and Carlton is looking for its own rise from the ashes left from last week's loss on the road to Gold Coast.

So who could possibly believe in Port Adelaide this time?

The players do, says Hinkley.

"We are not going to stop (believing) because of the losses," adds Port Adelaide defender Ryan Burton, who will return to the MCG - where his AFL career began for Hawthorn on August 13, 2016 with a win against North Melbourne - to play his 100th senior national league game (and 53rd for Port Adelaide).

Technically, the curtain does not fall on any AFL team's season until the 11th loss is recorded in a 22-game home-and-away season. Sydney proved in 2017 that a 0-6 start does not end a campaign to reach the top-eight finals in September.

Can Port Adelaide overcome a 0-4 start? Even an unwanted 0-5 start?

"Of course we can," says Hinkley. "There is a long way to go ... but clearly (every loss) makes it harder; genuinely harder. But get things going, get things back together, get some people coming in (to the AFL line-up) ... and I am really optimistic about the people we are getting back this week.

"The Port Adelaide team of this week will have a bit of confidence about it."

Some belief.

SWINGS AND ROUNDABOUTS

A WISE man once declared, "Never look at the players sent to the grandstand ... they can't win the game from there."

So, for all the pain felt without All-Australian key forward Charlie Dixon and now premiership-winning lead ruckman Scott Lycett while this powerful duo recuperates from ankle and shoulder surgery respectively, the focus is on the gains:

ALIIR ALIIR, the All-Australian defender who - after just 25 AFL games at Port Adelaide since leaving Sydney - has become such a critical part of how Port Adelaide defends ... and rebounds from defence. He returns after four weeks on the sidelines after needing ankle surgery.

Port Adelaide's system of team defence also has appeared to crumble in Aliir's absence.

"You do miss All-Australian players," said Hinkley. "Aliir is a significant piece of our defence ... as is Charlie (Dixon) at the other end. Aliir is a special player in the way he plays for us. We do miss him. We don't hide from that.

"The opposition also knows that. So, they put a fair bit of treatment into Aliir too. That attention opens opportunities for other players. It is not just what Aliir does; it is how he helps other people do things."

There is no Lachie Jones (COVID protocols) to rebound from half-back, so either Dan Houston or Miles Bergman will swing out of the midfield to work in defence alongside Aliir.

ROBBIE GRAY, the one player Carlton certainly did not want to see back considering the scar he left on the Victorian-based club with his goal after the siren at the Gabba in 2020.

A refreshed Gray returns after dealing with the knock to a knee in the season-opener against Brisbane and the COVID protocols that extended his absence from the team to include the losses to Adelaide and Melbourne in the past fortnight.

The experienced match-winner gives substance to an attack that returns to the three-tall format with Todd Marshall, Mitch Georgiades and Greater Western Sydney recruit Jeremy Finlayson, who responded to his AFL axing by scoring six goals in the SANFL against South Adelaide at the weekend.

Sounder in defence. More potent in attack. Now it is up to the midfield - in particular the younger midfielders - to answer that challenge posed to them at the start of the year when Port Adelaide put on the agenda the need to demand less of former captain, ironman Travis Boak and now without the services of Brownlow Medallist Wines.

"Willem Drew. Karl Amon. Sam Powell-Pepper. Connor Rozee. Zak Butters. All those people we have talked about all summer, they are the ones who have to share the load," Hinkley said.

TALL ORDER

HE stands at 205 centimetres.

He works a frame that weighs 102 kilograms.

And he carries more than the usual focus that is on an AFL debutant.

Five years after being called by Port Adelaide at No. 47 in the AFL national draft, the highly touted Sam Hayes gets his moment on the big stage. He arrives with a fair bit already having been said while the Port Adelaide match committee was repeatedly asked: "Does Hayes play this week?"

Opportunity knocks by the long-term loss of Lycett, who will be on the sidelines for at least three months.

"We are really confident that Sam has had a great preparation to become an AFL player and an AFL ruckman," Hinkley said of his 2021 SANFL club champion.  

BAROMETERS

SO it is not just Port Adelaide that can be measured by the key performance indicator of contested possessions.

In the 3-0 start made under new coach (and former Port Adelaide senior assistant) Michael Voss, Carlton won the differentials on contested possession, clearances and inside-50. Very Port Adelaide.

Against Gold Coast, in suffering its first loss of the season, Carlton lost the differentials on these three indicators by 13, 16 and 16.

Notable in the new gameplan put together by Carlton is the way Voss has his players clearing the defensive 50 - his team is the most-reluctant of all AFL sides to use the centre corridor (just 8.8 per cent of Carlton's exit plays are through this direct channel to the goalfront).

At the other extreme is Carlton's work from centre clearances. It has the highest differential (11 points) for score from centre bounce.

MAKE IT COUNT

SOME numbers on the AFL statistical sheets do indeed tell a story. Such as Port Adelaide's attack where the targeted forwards have marked 15.6 per cent of the opportunities presented and scored on 14.4 per cent of the opportunities created. These figures are half the AFL average.

Not every number is bleak. Young forward Mitch Georgiades in ranked in the AFL top-10 (equal sixth) for contested marks, a theme much missed without Dixon.

"We have missed opportunities; we have not got it quite right going forward and some of the people in the front half have not been as good as we would have liked," Hinkley said. "But we are capable."

And that leaves the quote of the week to tennis great Bill Jean King:

"Champions keep playing until they get it right."

BIRD SEED

(the little stuff that counts most)

Port Adelaide v Carlton

Where: MCG

When: Sunday, April 17, 2022

Time: 1.10pm (SA time)

Last time: Port Adelaide 21.14 (140) d Carlton 5.15 (45) at Adelaide Oval, round 22, August 14, 2021

Overall: Port Adelaide 21, Carlton 13, one draw.

Past five games (most recent first): W W W W W

Scoring average: Port Adelaide 101, Carlton 88

Drawn game - Port Adelaide 15.19 (109) drew with Carlton 16.13 (109) at Football Park, round 4, April 16, 2005.

Tightest margin - Port Adelaide by three points (64-61) at the Gabba, round 7, July 19, 2020; Carlton by one point (104-103) at Football Park, round 23, August 31, 2013.

Biggest margin - Port Adelaide by 103 points (140-37) at Adelaide Oval, round 22, August 22, 2014; Carlton by 91 points (169-78) at Princes Park, round 6, April 15, 2000.

By venues - Adelaide Oval (4-0); Football Park (8-1-7); Princes Park (3-1); MCG (3-1); Docklands (2-4), Gabba (1-0).

By States - SA: 12-1-7; Victoria: 8-6; Queensland: 1-0.

THEY never, ever gave up.

But they also fell agonisingly short, by three points to a resurgent Carlton at the MCG to prove yet again that "catch-up football" is the toughest game of all to play.

Down by 50 points as time was almost done in the second term, Port Adelaide set up the prospect of a date-appropriate football miracle on Easter Sunday with a six-goal third term - and a nine-goal second half that changed the entire tone of this game.

Almost everything that was wrong with Port Adelaide in the first half dramatically changed during the third and last terms. The midfield was assertive after coach Ken Hinkley threw the challenge to first-round draftees Zak Butters and Connor Rozee to prove themselves. The attack became vibrant - and productive on the scoreboard. And the defence was protected.

They simply never gave up. And they will need that spirit to hold if Port Adelaide is to change the storyline - and consequences - of the harrowing 0-5 win-loss count that marks the club's worst start to an AFL season.

An hour after the game had seemed locked away by an assertive Carlton holding a 49-point lead at half-time, midfielder Karl Amon was left with the chance for a miraculous victory. But that last-minute set shot from 52 metres only highlighted just how close but also how far Port Adelaide came to ending its losing streak.

Carlton managed just two goals in the second half - and only one in the last term when key forward Charlie Curnow scored his fifth of the match to take the lead to nine points in the 19th minute.

Seven minutes earlier, Port Adelaide forward specialist Robbie Gray had reduced the margin to two points. With 3:30 left on the clock, Port Adelaide key forward Mitch Georgiades had made it three points.

The turnaround in Port Adelaide's play was quite extraordinary. So was the resilience and determination to not roll over when all seemed lost.  

Scoring had been a chore for Port Adelaide in the first half. For the fourth time in five AFL home-and-away games this season, Port Adelaide had just five goals or less at half-time - this time four while Carlton had 12.

But scoring became the reward for hard work after half-time, particularly for the Port Adelaide midfielders who rediscovered how to strip the ball from their Carlton opponents and to lock the play in the Port Adelaide forward half.

There were five goalkickers in that third term of Port Adelaide defiance, starting with the brash ways of Sam Powell-Pepper, followed by Butters, two from 100-game player and far-roaming defender Ryan Burton, Travis Boak and Rozee. It would have been six - and a 10-point margin - had Gray converted from a free kick rather than put the ball out-of-bounds on the full on the siren.

All six goals were created by forward-half plays, easing the pressure on the Port Adelaide defenders who would have appreciated the way their team-mates had rediscovered the powerful theme of "team defence".

Port Adelaide will again lament missed opportunities. Gray's goal in the 13th minute of the fourth term - that reduced the margin to two points - followed a hectic run of four unanswered scoring sorties by Port Adelaide. But only 1.3 was put on the scoreboard while Gray missed and Steven Motlop missed twice before the sequence was broken by Powell-Pepper.

Defending was more certain during the second half when Port Adelaide rebuilt its wall of "team defence". Even with the return of All-Australian key defender Aliir Aliir - who was compelled to lock down on a Carlton key forward rather than patrol territory to become a roadblock with his trademark intercept marks - the Port Adelaide defence was cut open too often with quick and direct movement during the first half.

Port Adelaide's midfield - deprived of Brownlow Medallist Ollie Wines - might be closer to finding more than one "next-generation" star to ease the burden on former captain Travis Boak.

The challenge to step up certainly was put on the shoulders of Butters and Rozee during the second half after Carlton had gained so much from its young sensation Sam Walsh. Butters finished with 32 touches and won six clearances; Rozee had 24 and two and showed his work ethic with six tackles. Both young midfielders put goals on the scoring sheet.

On a day when the Port Adelaide midfield needed to also support a first-game ruckman, the numbers were heavily loaded in Carlton's favour at half-time - and read better at full-time when Port Adelaide was 11-17 down on centre clearances and winning 22-21 elsewhere on the field.

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Port Adelaide returned to the three talls of Todd Marshall, Mitch Georgiades and Jeremy Finlayson in attack for the third time this season. Finlayson finally has his first goal in Port Adelaide colours after moving from Greater Western Sydney during the recent trade period and finished with 1.2 and notably took eight marks. Georgiades scored two goals.

Carlton gained eight goals from its key forward pairing of Coleman Medallist Harry McKay (3.1) and Charlie Curnow (5.1) who were blessed with assertive supply during the first half. Carlton built a 25-point lead off six goals at quarter-time and another six in the second term to almost double the lead to 49 points.

Port Adelaide had to wait until the start of the third term to get a run of unanswered goals - from Powell-Pepper and Butters.

The contrast in the movement to forwards marked the difference between the two teams at half-time.  Carlton had reason to work quickly into attack. There was the strong presence of go-to targets in Curnow and McKay, who first drew Aliir into a heavy one-on-one duel; and the opportunist Jack Martin with his two goals in the opening term and three score assists.

Sam Hayes' AFL debut as Port Adelaide's lead ruck began with the first touch from a centre bounce that heavily favoured him. Whatever surprise there was from the ball not being recalled was quickly overtaken by the holding-the-ball call on Port Adelaide midfielder Willem Drew after he ran onto Hayes' tap.

Called into the AFL line-up by the loss of experienced ruck Scott Lycett (shoulder surgery), Hayes finished the demanding assignment against Carlton’s Marc Pittonet with 20 hit-outs and five disposals.

Port Adelaide's injury woes continued to leave the impression of a team that is cursed - this time with captain Tom Jonas with a right-knee injury that forced him off the field for tests late in the second term. He returned after half-time with the right knee strapped and saw out the game.

CARLTON v PORT ADELAIDE

PORT ADELAIDE          2.3       4.5     10.9    13.13 (91)

CARLTON                       6.4    12.4     13.8    14.10 (94)

BEST - Port Adelaide: Burton, Butters, Rozee, Houston, Gray, Powell-Pepper.

GOALS - Port Adelaide: Gray 3, Burton, Georgiades, Powell-Pepper 2, Boak, Butters, Finlayson, Rozee.

MEDICAL SUBSTITUTE: Jed McEntee (not activated).

CROWD: 33,433 at the MCG

NEXT: v West Coast at Adelaide Oval, Saturday 4.05pm