Port Adelaide’s defeat in the preliminary final was gut-wrenching for defender Tom Jonas, but he says a grand final is definitely within reach in 2015.

Jonas says Port’s players were overcome with emotion following their three-point loss to Hawthorn at the MCG.

“There’s always probably a few tears, especially when you see your family and see how much it’s hurting the boys and the coaches,” Jonas told AAP.

“To put so much into this and come so close, it’s pretty sombre.

“Everyone was devastated. It’s absolutely gut-wrenching.

“But there’s plenty of positives. We lost to last year’s premiers by three points.

“Kenny Hinkley just told us how proud he was of us.”

Port were 14th in 2012. In two seasons under Hinkley they’ve climbed to fifth in 2013 and a preliminary final this season.

Jonas says Port are surging into grand-final contention.

And they have history on their side. Hawthorn lost their 2011 preliminary final to Collingwood by three points, before winning the flag in the following season.

“We definitely feel like we’re on the rise,” said Jonas, 23.

“We’ve come from a long way back in the past 24 months and we’re still a very young group.

“As we mature and grow there’s nothing that can really stop us.

“We feel like we can go one better or two better next year.”

Jonas had a controversial free kick paid against him in the final minute after Hawthorn’s Luke Hodge had smothered Brad Ebert’s kick at half-forward.

Ebert had chosen to play on immediately as Port were desperate to launch one more attacking raid, before a scramble for the ball at ground level ended with the umpire awarding possession to Hodge.

“Kenny’s really big on ‘if you’re going to lose, you might as well go down swinging’,” Jonas said of Port’s attacking style of play.

“He (Ebert) had to go. Kenny wants us to take the game on.

“If we make a mistake, he doesn’t crucify us.

“It comes off most of the time so we’ve just got to keep going for it.”

Jonas says the pain of Saturday’s loss is going to “burn” over the summer.