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IF HE had his time again, Port Adelaide coach Matthew Primus admits he would have tried to combat Crows ruckman Sam Jacobs with two specialist rucks of his own, but he felt turnovers, not Jacobs' 61 hit-outs, were the key factor in Saturday night's loss.

Power big man Matthew Lobbe, 23, was completely outclassed by Jacobs, who was playing just his 50th AFL game.

Lobbe received scant help from key position players Jackson Trengove and Justin Westhoff as he battled the 203cm giant, but Primus felt Port's inability to hang onto the ball was a greater factor in the 58-point defeat. 

"If I was sitting here right now and had to pick the team [again] I'd want to use another ruck," Primus said.

"But we've had two rucks for the last five or six weeks and it hasn't seemed to help us.

"I thought the biggest issue was the amount of times we kicked it back to Adelaide more than our stoppages.

"We made life really hard for ourselves. It's miles away from the footy we've played at times this year, and a lot more this year, but what we just served up was a million miles away from that.

[ Related: Boak unfazed by Power struggles ]

"It's not who we are or where we want to go to, but we've served it up.

"The amount of times we turned the ball over just made it impossible for us to get it back off them and allowed them to score."

Primus said a desire to stretch Adelaide with an extra runner was behind his decision to go with Lobbe as a lone ruck in his 15th AFL game.

Even if he did have two ruckmen at his disposal, Primus didn't think it would have altered the result.

"If we had've had two rucks, we might have taken away a bit of his dominance, but would it have helped us with our running and handballing and kicking? Probably not," he said.

[ Related: Match report ]

The coach admitted to being frustrated as the club slumped to its 10th loss of the season, but he pledged to continue to work with his players to emerge from the doldrums.

"I'm as frustrated as anybody is working at this club or supporting this club," he said.

"We're certainly not where we want to be at, but we are going to continue to believe in this group.

"That's easy to say after a win and harder to say after a loss, but we are going to continue to keep believing in this group and pushing them to high standards and expecting them to play at a better level week in and week out.

"It will start with our review and it will start against Essendon. This is disappointing, especially against our archrivals who we hate to lose to, but it's happened, and we're going to learn from it."

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs