Match Report: Blues Rain on Port's Parade
The Power slumped to their ninth loss of the season on Sunday, going down to top-four fancies Carlton by 62 points at AAMI Stadium.
Port Adelaide, which has the bye next week, will have a fortnight to reflect on the loss before preparing for the unenviable task of playing West Coast at Patersons Stadium in round 13.
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The Power are only three wins out of the top eight but given they've managed only two wins in the opening 11 rounds it's unlikely the team will recover enough to be a part of finals action.
The club has its second bye in round 18, and Primus said he would sit down with his players to set some goals for the five-week period in between byes.
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"The timing of our byes means we've got five weeks to set ourselves some goals and challenges before our next bye," Primus said after the loss to Carlton on Sunday.
"We'll evaluate that...and decide what we want from those five weeks.
"It's a mini-season for us."
Port Adelaide put together its most complete performance of the season to upset Richmond at TIO Stadium in Darwin last weekend, raising hopes the club had turned the corner on its inconsistent start to the season.
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However, that hope proved to be false against Carlton on Sunday.
The Power were competitive in the first half, but conceded 11 goals to one in the second half to suffer their seventh 50-plus point defeat this year, and their worst loss at home.
"We just weren't able to keep crashing in or to negate Carlton...in terms of how they wanted to play," Primus said.
"Their onballers, Marc Murphy, Mitch Robinson, Heath Scotland and Chris Yarran, in the end got on top of us and generated a lot of the ball.
"They were able to run it out a lot better than us. We probably hung in there in the third quarter, but the writing was on the wall that we were going to get overwhelmed."
The Power fielded five players with less than 10 games of experience against the in-form Blues, but Primus said some of the club's more senior players were simply not good enough on Sunday night.
"You can give them [some of the players] the excuse of inexperience at AFL footy, others have had interrupted pre-seasons and others were not good enough," he said.
"It's an education process...the ability to play at a high level for four quarters. We've done that once this year and that was against Richmond [last weekend].
"The rest of the year it's been for halves and three quarters. We can take positives out of that but in the end if you want to win games of footy and lots of them, you need to do it for a lot longer.
"Tonight, we had quite a few guys, who looked pretty flat after half time."
Ruckman Dean Brogan sustained separate knocks to his knee and ribs, and required six stitches to repair a cut to his finger, but Primus said he expected the veteran to be fit play against the Eagles in a fortnight.
Midfielders Dom Cassisi (tibial fracture) and David Rodan (knee) should also be available.
