PORT ADELAIDE opened its 2022 AFL premiership season campaign with a hard-fought 11-point loss to Brisbane, with the Power wrestling into a third quarter lead, but ultimately coming undone at the hands of a fast-finishing Lions outfit.

While disappointed not to open the season with a win, senior coach Ken Hinkley says the uncompromising, combative and brutal style of play his team put on display at the Gabba can form the solid foundations for Port Adelaide’s premiership aspirations in 2022.

“I thought it was a tough game of footy,” Hinkley told reporters in his post-match press conference.

“A really tough and brutal game of football where you have to understand what you’re playing against and who you’re playing against.

“Both sides gave a lot tonight and by the end Brisbane were good enough in the last six minutes of the game after we did a lot of things right and played a game of football that would typically give you a pretty good outcome.

“When you come up to Brisbane and play Brisbane, who are a really strong team, a really well coached team that can push any team up here, I said to the boys ‘if we can play that way every week, we will win a lot more football games than we lose.'"

As if tackling another of the competition’s premiership fancies wasn’t already a testing enough task, the degree of difficulty was further increased by the growing toll of injuries during the game.

Wingman Xavier Duursma (collarbone) was subbed from the match in the first quarter after a heavy front-on collision with Lions hard man Mitch Robinson, before key defender Trent McKenzie was stretchered from the ground in the final stanza after landing awkwardly on his knee.

Meanwile, Robbie Gray (knee), Connor Rozee (ankle), Aliir Aliir (ankle) and several others also kept Port’s trainers busy throughout the contest.

While Hinkley refused to pin the result purely on the effect of injuries, he admitted fatigue as a result of being shorthanded most of the game left his side behind the eight ball in the closing minutes.

“Without blaming injuries, 100 per cent (they had an impact on performance),” he said.

“That’s the reality of brutal footy. We lost plenty through the night and we had plenty of boys out there with some support and assistance (from medical staff) as the game went on.

“That’s what happens when you play high quality football against tough teams, you have to pay a price. I thought our blokes were prepared to pay the price.

“By the end, maybe we were out on our legs a little bit. I’m not saying that was 100 per cent (why the momentum turned) because Brisbane lifted and they took it to another level and we couldn’t keep coming.”

Fortunately, early prognosis suggests the damage is not as bad as it could have been for Duursma and McKenzie, with the pair set for scans once the side returns to Adelaide to confirm the full extent of their injuries.

“Xavier looks like he’s okay from a structural point of view or a break, it’s been checked and it’s okay,” said Hinkley. “But at the time we were fearing that it may have been broken.”

“Trent looks like, and we don’t know (until he has scans), but we think he may have escaped the worst. We will wait and see, but on the initial tests our doctor is very experienced and he is reasonably confident that as an ACL goes it’s not that.”

Hinkley also praised his medical staff and the manner in which they handled themselves under duress at certain points of the match as they scrambled to patch up players left and right and get them back into the contest.

“Our doctors did a marvellous job tonight when I consider what they had to get going as quick as they could,” he said.

“When that happens and there is 10, 12, 15 minutes in quarters where you’re getting someone back (onto the field), that also adds up by the time you get to the final five or six minutes (of the game).”

Leaving Queensland without the four points will certainly sting for Hinkley and his troops after working so hard to put themselves in a position to win and make an early statement to the competition.

However, after demanding competitive and brutal football from his players during the pre-season, Hinkley was pragmatic about the result and the endeavour of his team.

“I was buoyant about the way we went about it,” he said of his players application.

“We were not only in the game at quarter time, but with six minutes to go. We had to do something different (due to injuries). We were demanded to do something different and the group demanded that of themselves.

“I’m sure Brisbane would be sitting there going ‘they’ve earned that one’ and it had to go to the wire.”