AFTER conceding the club's two heaviest losses in its history within a week, Matthew Primus will spend Sunday contemplating how to get his players up for their next match. And the Port coach hopes the players will spend the time working out if they actually want to be at Alberton.
The Power coach locked his players away after Saturday's 165-point loss to Hawthorn at the MCG, but didn't give them a "bake" or run through exactly why he thought they fell away even more dramatically than they did against Collingwood seven days earlier.
Instead, he asked them to go away and think about whether they're committed to the club, after questioning their attitude following an abandonment of the resilience they showed earlier in the season.
"We can't afford to not bring the right attitude every week, whether we're at home or away, and the last two weeks have smelt a bit of that so we've got to make sure that doesn’t happen," he said.
"The club needs a real honest effort from every player, every coach and everyone involved in the footy club every week, and at the moment, we haven't had that.
"We asked them to go away and think about their commitment to each other and the club, come in Monday and give us an answer if you really were committed this week to coming out and preparing to play.
"We'll see how many honest answers we get."
Primus said attitude was the players' "biggest issue", and he still believed they had the young talent pressing through - emphasised on Saturday by impressive debuts from John Butcher and Tom Jonas - which he highlighted as a positive.
But he said the loss - combined with last week's to the Pies - showed just how far away the Power were as a club from contesting with good teams.
"We're just competing at a basic AFL standard. We're not committed to doing that yet," he said.
"Everyone together, I'm not going to individualise or get into individual players or certain groups; it's all of us together and we're just not committed to being the best footy club we can be week in week out.
"If you are, you might lose against the good teams but you don't get pumped like we have.
"We can't escape from the fact if you're committed to [play AFL footy], you don't lose by 160 points."
Primus, who played 137 games for the club and captained it between 2001 and 2004, said he was sick of facing up to such dramatic losses, especially when they occurred back to back.
He also said the past fortnight (and the Power's entire season that has produced just two wins) was making it hard for the club to retain out-of-contract youngsters such as Alipate Carlile and Jackson Trengove.
"It would be a lot easier if we had won the last two weeks or won 10 games this year; it would be easier to sell that message to those guys who are out of contract," he said.
"That's difficult but the club's doing the best they can to convince them there's a future here but at the moment I'm sure they're not thinking positively about their future here."
Primus said nothing had moved regarding negotiations with the pair but admitted the club would get more "demanding" in finding out their intentions over the next three weeks.
He said finals looked "a million miles away", however he was confident his players could turn it around by getting the young players "fitter and stronger" and surrounding them with good coaches.
He also said working out who wanted to remain at the club was a priority.
"Until you sort out the issues of our list and who actually wants to be here and play for the football club, you're not going to sort out the other stuff and that comes before anything else," he said.
"Even though we're all feeling, everyone who supports the club and works at the club, pretty low at the moment, I believe in what I'm doing and what we can get out of this group and what we can improve as a group and where we can go as a group.
"We've got a big few weeks ahead of us before we can start looking ahead to pre-season."
Primus said the club planned to be active in trade week but wasn't yet sure of how many changes the list faced at the end of round 24.
