PORT ADELAIDE senior assistant coach Matthew Nicks says his side will learn from its “horror day” in Perth last Sunday.
The Power fell by nine points to the Dockers in a low-scoring affair in which skill errors cost it a chance at a sixth win in-a-row.
Nicks told Adelaide radio show Sportsday SA it was a tough game to review.
“It was one of those days, it was a horror day,” he said.
“Looking back over the vision, we came to that conclusion as a coaching group that it was a game we may be best in moving on from to keep the group in a good space without ignoring some issues.
“It’s important that we stay up and about now – we were coming off five wins going into that one so let’s gain some positives out of those wins and now go into a really tough game against GWS this week.”
The Power failed to make the most of its chances in the first
The result has left Port in
“We were beaten by a side that was playing a lot better footy than we were,” Nicks said of Sunday’s game.
“It was such a disappointing day, we just didn’t show up, and it’s going to cost us so that’s disappointing from that point of view but we’ve now got an even bigger challenge – we’ve got a huge challenge this week.
“Our guys will learn something from such a poor game, it’s not like we’ll come away with nothing from it.”
The challenge this week is to face the seventh-placed Greater Western Sydney side which just beat reigning premiers Richmond.
Nicks said it would be a tricky proposition.
“When they get their offence or their transition game going, they are elite at that transition from defence to offence,” he said.
“They’ve got midfielders who are highly skilled, they use the ball really well, they’ve now been forced to go a bit smaller in the forward line with Paton going down and they’ve had some guys go in who’ve played some amazing football.
“When they get going they’re a very very hard team to stop so our challenge is to not allow them to get their offence or transition game going and we have to bring ours.”
After a weekend in which there were injuries to ruckman Paddy Ryder and forwards Robbie Gray and Todd Marshall, there was good news with Marshall’s ankle injury confirmed to be a sprain with no structural damage and Ryder’s hip flexor prognosis better than first thought.
“When you do see a player like him go down and you hear the doctors and physios talk about missing him for a month you do start to worry because he’s super important to us,” Nicks said of Ryder.
“We’ll have to wait and see how he trains but hopefully it’s just one (week), maybe two out.”
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