PORT Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley put on a brave face on Saturday night after his side's 86-point capitulation to North Melbourne placed its finals chances in serious danger.

Hinkley didn't shy away from how poor the Power was, admitting everything that could have gone wrong did and that the Roos "belted" his players in all areas.

However, Port Adelaide remains in a four-way race to win the eighth and final spot in the finals and that was Hinkley's message post-match.

A final-round date with Fremantle at Adelaide Oval in the final game of the home and away season on Sunday week will determine the Power's fortunes.

"It's clearly incredibly disappointing. The performance was so far from where we've been. It's a really difficult game for us to go through," he told reporters.

"But what we need to do is not overreact right now and make sure we get the detail and look at the game closely, because if we look at that game, we got everything you could possibly get wrong…

"We know we are way better than that performance. We have consistently seen, and we've seen it in the last couple of weeks, sides have an absolutely disastrous game, but turn it around and bounce back.

"That's up to us right now, to turn it around and bounce back, because with one round to go, there's so much still going on and so much still to play for."

North Melbourne ruckman Todd Goldstein dominated Port's two ruckmen Paddy Ryder and Peter Ladhams, as high-priced recruit Scott Lycett spends a third week in the SANFL.

Hinkley hailed Goldstein as the best player afield – better even than the Kangaroos' 10-goal forward Ben Brown – and said he "smacked us good".

Lycett's predicament was an obvious talking point in the wake of Goldstein's performance, with Hinkley saying his demotion owed mostly to Ladhams' emergence.

"That's an easy question on reflection, but last week we were complementing what we were doing with some of those people who were in the ruck for us," Hinkley said.

"Young Pete is a learning ruck – we get that and we understand that – but his challenge was to come up against a competition elite ruckman and clearly tonight he got a lesson and he'll learn a lot from that.

"Scott's a very valuable part, and has been, I've said that all the way through. It's not like we don't think Scott's going to be back in our team.

"But tonight, after the event, we could easily have had Scott Lycett maybe out there, but Scott went out of the side for a couple of reasons as well, so it's not that easy."

Hinkley's team has been unpredictable all season, but the coach said that was indicative of not just his men but the competition as a whole.

He pointed to how North Melbourne and Essendon responded this week to heavy defeats last round as cases in point.

One aspect that had no impact, according to Hinkley, was Port Adelaide chairman David Koch's high expectations for the club.

"We've spoken about that. We've had a lot of comments about what David and I both think collectively, and we both agree we set out, like 18 teams, to make finals," Hinkley said.

"That's what we're in the competition for. We're not here to make up numbers – we're not here to not be a part of trying to win it.

"We try to win it every year, and it doesn't have one iota of bearing on the way we approach week in, week out.

"David's incredibly supportive of myself and I'm incredibly supportive of our playing group, and we'll stick at the challenge we have in front of us."