ANYONE have a rabbit's foot they are no longer using?

Whatever injury curse there may be at Alberton, there is one old saying that is most appropriate today: The harder you work, the luckier you get.

And Port Adelaide has plenty of hard work in front of itself if Season 2021 is to avoid a series of lingering "what if" questions.

There are six games to play in the home-and-away series that ends with a pre-finals super test against a genuine pacesetter, the Western Bulldogs in Melbourne. Before this, there is St Kilda (away), Collingwood, Greater Western Sydney (venue uncertain due to lockdowns), Adelaide and Carlton to play.

The forecast is for Port Adelaide to rank fifth to September's top-eight play-offs.

The premiership table is not misleading. It is quite clear where Port Adelaide fits in the three distinct categories among the 18 AFL teams. It has progressed beyond the also-rans who make up the bottom-10 sides by the end of 22 qualifying games.

Port Adelaide is not meeting the level of the top-four teams, as noted by an away loss to Brisbane (49 points) at the Gabba and three home loses to Geelong (21), the Western Bulldogs (19) and at Adelaide Oval on Thursday night to this season's biggest improver, Melbourne (31).

Port Adelaide is in that contender group (fifth to eighth) wanting to be a genuine challenger for the flag.

Six weeks are left to prepare a team to be the best of eight in September when the AFL premiership is decided. And it will take more and more hard work to turn Port Adelaide into a serious challenger that defies the results - and image - left from results chalked up between March and August.

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley went into this round 17 top-four clash wanting more information. He gained plenty - and another reason to avoid ladders, black cats, cracks in the pavement, spilling salt, mirrors and any other potential bad omen.

The long-awaited return of midfielder-forward Zak Butters lasted until the 15th minute of the third term when Port Adelaide was clawing back the half-time margin from 19 to nine points. After three months on the sidelines recuperating from an ankle and knee injury on his left leg, Butters has strained his right knee.

If Port Adelaide was ambivalent about the hasty introduction of the medical substitute as the 23rd man just before the start of the home-and-away season, it might become one of the major advocates for the rule to stay ... and perhaps expand to a 24th man.

Technically, the game ultimately revealed Melbourne is just what Port Adelaide was presenting at the start of the season.

Port Adelaide opened with so much energy, best captured in the bullish work of Sam Powell-Pepper. But very little came from this drive - and there is a touch of "irony" that Port Adelaide's final score of 55 points mirrored the number that has concerned Melbourne during its self-described "flat spot" since the mid-season bye a month ago.

Melbourne crowded so much of Port Adelaide's forward half that ultimately every inside-50 entry appeared messy, rushed, wide and awkward. The only answer in penetrating this Melbourne maze was to go over it with full back Trent McKenzie's 60-metre kick from the boundary on the north-west flank in the 29th minute of the second term.

On the rebound, Melbourne's transition into open space across its open forward 50 was a refresher course on how Port Adelaide was playing in April. Melbourne scored six of its 12 goals from seamless chains from the back-half of the field - the neatest from Bayley Fritsch after he won his one-on-one contest with key defender Tom Clurey on the top of the 50-metre arc late in the second term.

Melbourne had invaluable time and space; Port Adelaide did not.

Melbourne had so many contributors and role players; Port Adelaide did not. Port Adelaide increasingly appears more and more reliant on midfielders Ollie Wines, Travis Boak and Karl Amon.

The continued investment in the three talls in attack - Charlie Dixon, Todd Marshall and Mitch Georgiades - is paying off with more and more promise in Georgiades (2.1, five marks). The line from last season that Georgiades would appear on air traffic control screens for his high leaps was given justification during the third term when the West Australian draftee leapt onto the shoulders of Melbourne ruckman Max Gawn and held airspace waiting for Sherrin in a contender for mark of the year.

Port Adelaide's pre-game preference to play all four tall defenders allowed the first use of Sydney recruit Aliir Allir in ruck, sparing Dixon copping from more batterings in the centre circle, and as a forward. More information for the match committee ...

Port Adelaide certainly is not short of data now that it has played all of the top-four teams that will command favouritism for the premiership.

Again, the theme is: Port Adelaide is good. "But not as good as we need to be," says Hinkley. "There is a gap. And we need more polish against the better teams."

So there are six weeks of hard work ahead. The script now is very much about getting to September's top-eight finals in the best shape possible to challenge.

A top-four berth appears harder to achieve today. The injury list is harder to read, particularly with it again claiming Butters. And the external doubts on Port Adelaide's premiership claims will be inflicted even harder on a team that has to accept the critics' reviews as a challenge to ensure they are rewritten with contrasting themes in September.

Time to roll up the sleeves even more ...