IN 10 days, Port Adelaide will lose its supreme tagger.

Kane Cornes’s departure after 300 games will leave a sizeable void in the club’s engine room, although even he admits his best football is behind him.

Few players have carved out a tagging reputation like Cornes, who has contained some of the biggest names in the game over the last 15 years.

His performance against Simon Black in the 2004 Grand Final was arguably worthy of the Norm Smith Medal, this year, he’s kept Sam Mitchell and Rory Sloane out of the Power’s matches against the Hawks and Crows.

So where to for the Power? Is there an immediate heir apparent within the ranks?

Cornes thinks so, but won’t say who.

“I think they know who they are, I just spoke to the players then, you probably don’t need to be Einstein to work it out,” Cornes told a crowded Adelaide Oval media centre on Thursday morning.

“I’m confident in our list and confident in the guys who can come in, you’ll get to see that over the next month or so.”

So what is the chance Ken Hinkley will reveal who those players are?

Slim.

But he says Cornes, despite his extensive list of achievements, isn’t irreplaceable.

“We’re not one player away,” Hinkley said.

“Kane didn’t play against Kangaroos, Kane hasn’t played other games and we’ve been able to play, and that’s just the way footy is, the way it goes.”

And for Hinkley the loss of Cornes as a valuable tagger and midfielder presents opportunity for a handful of players to make the step up.

“There’s young players right now … who’d be quite excited, they’d be seeing an opportunity from their point of view, there’s one spot available for them to play,” Hinkley said.

“Hopefully there’s a surprise, as Kane says they’re pretty recognisable amongst our group, but hopefully there’s a surprise and someone else jumps up as well.”