Last year, Port Adelaide coach Matthew Primus was sick of losing. Now, he’s sick of not winning.
What is the difference? For Primus, plenty.
Primus has seemingly restored Port Adelaide as a competitive AFL outfit.
After his club’s worst season returned just three wins and record defeats last year, beating Port this year has become a challenge again.
But Primus is far from satisfied with merely being competitive in Saturday’s 22-point loss to Sydney, and last week’s 25-point away defeat to Essendon.
“We’re not saying we’re happy we were competitive and had a crack,” Primus said after Sydney prevailed 16.9 (105) to Port’s 12.11 (83) at AAMI Stadium.
“We lost a game we thought we could have won, and should have won.
“It was the same as last week.
“The guys have got the platform now to be competitive in games – that is a given.
“We now need to win games and we should have won today’s game.”
Primus said there were identical reasons for the consecutive losses.
“It was the same as last week – a lot of our turnovers really hurt us,” he said.
“It’s just some basic errors, a bit of game-sense, a bit of composure.”
The Power travel to meet Collingwood at the MCG next Saturday with forward John Butcher expected to return from a two-match absence caused by a hamstring injury.