HONOURABLE, brave and valiant; three adjectives most people would like used in a sentence describing them … but not the Power.

For Port Adelaide, these typically positive connotations have, this season, gone hand in hand with heartbreaking, narrow defeats, and the players, coaches and supporters are sick of it.

The long-serving motto at Alberton is all about winning and, despite being heartened by some solid performances in 2008, Port Adelaide has never been and will never be satisfied with second.

“We don’t want to be known as a team that has an honourable loss every week. We want to start winning,” vice-captain Brendon Lade said after the game.

“Last year we were probably winning all these close games. It really does make a difference to your season when you can win games by one, two or three goals. This year we’ve lost four or five of those tight ones.

“We’ll keep working on what we’re doing. I think were heading in the right direction, but we just can’t maintain it for long enough.”

During the week, Port Adelaide acknowledged the Swans’ claim as one of the best-starting teams in the competition, but still failed to stop the visitors slamming on eight first-quarter goals.

The Power matched the Swans in all the statistical categories they needed to, including the stoppages and contested ball, but struggled to move the ball purposefully inside their forward 50m.

“We’ll have a look at the first half, go over it as a group and tidy up a few areas, because it wasn’t good enough. We had more of everything [in the stats] and were down by two goals, so something has to be fixed,” Lade said.

“The second half was much better and we played the way we want to play footy, but our skills weren’t good enough going forward. I think we kicked five out on the full in the last quarter when we were going into our forward line.

“We’ll rebuild and focus on next week now because Fremantle plays well over there and we’ll look forward to that.”

“Hopefully we can get a win on the board and really build from there. We think we’re a pretty good team that is around the mark, but unfortunately, we‘re 3-6, so it’s something we have to keep working on.”