PORT ADELAIDE senior assistant coach Michael Voss admits the club has talked about playing finals but won’t allow that to blur its vision when it comes to its remaining games this season.

Port has won eleven of its 14 games and sits top of the ladder but, like coach Ken Hinkley, Voss said the side still wasn’t playing its best football.

At a press conference on Monday, Voss explained that expectations had not changed since the start of the year.

“We’re still in the business of qualifying as best as we can,” he said.

“We’ve put ourselves in a really good position but we’ve got to close out the season, we’ve got to put a cap on top and that’s what we’re busily trying to achieve

“That should be a really nice carrot for the guys to come out with some really good intensity, have some urgency in our preparation and get ready for every game.

“We’ve been in positions before in previous seasons where we might have just looked ahead a bit too much and it’s caught us out and we just can’t afford to do that.”

Port enjoys an unusual bye this week that means it has seven days between the win over Sydney last Saturday and its match-up against North Melbourne on the Gold Coast this Saturday night.

Voss said the extended break between games would give the side time to review and refine a few things on the training track.

He said while it would be easy to relax knowing the side would be in the finals, that would not be the case.

“We’ve spoken about the fact that we’ve qualified for finals, that’s been an important milestone and with games remaining we can put ourselves in a really strong position but we’ve been really good this year at looking at our next contest,” Voss said.

“We’ve had good humility in the way we’ve gone about things and we’ve prepared for the next contest.

“We’ll do our normal process, we’ll review what we did well last week, what didn’t we and then we cast our eyes to North Melbourne.

“We had a game this time last year where we played North and they came off a bad loss and gave us a good correction so for us, it gives us a good reason not to take our eye off the ball.”

Brad Ebert was the only injury concern out of the 26-point victory over the Swans after his right cheek swelled up like an egg following a head knock.

Voss said he had been cleared of concussion issues and was expected to be available for selection this week.

“He was actually having a bit of a laugh on the bench. It came up pretty quick, the egg on his cheek,” Voss said.

“Once you saw his demeanour and his attitude, he was fine.

“I think he was just somewhat bemused by the fact that he had this other knock on his cheek in a completely different area.

“It seems like he’s got the all clear, which is good news and he’ll be ready to go this week.”

Another who could be in the selection frame is Dan Houston who has served his two match ban for a COVID-19 breach.

Ruckman Peter Ladhams still has another week to serve of his ban out of the same incident.

“They’re good men. They’re growing and they made a mistake. They’ve gone back and copped what’s come their way,” Voss said of the pair.

“There’s been some pretty tough conversations, some pretty honest ones that were needed to be had.

“They’ve accepted that, they’ve gone about their training really really well but they also know that they’ve got a lot of work to do.”