Port Adelaide showed the good, bad and ugly against Hawthorn, writes Michelangelo Rucci

GOOD, bad and ugly. At a time when everyone is trying to get a handle on Port Adelaide, the three-point loss to the lower-ranked Hawthorn in Launceston on Saturday says it all. Michelangelo Rucci looks at the performance.

Ken Hinkley speaks to his players during their loss to Hawthorn. Picture: Getty Images

GOOD, bad and ugly. At a time when everyone is trying to get a handle on Port Adelaide, the three-point loss to the lower-ranked Hawthorn in Launceston on Saturday says it all.

The Power (6-4 and out of the eight) is good … but not good enough. Certainly it is not good enough for long enough. The swing from good to bad — and then a wild attempt to win ugly — must drive coach Ken Hinkley to frustration.

It has for the club’s fans.

GAME RECAP: HOW THE HAWKS, POWER PLAYED OUT

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Port Adelaide’s opening term — 14 days after the Power’s last start, in Shanghai, China — was true to everything Hinkley, his coaching staff and his players have sought this season … but cannot always find with such a commanding tone from quarter to quarter, let alone game to game.

Robbie Gray tried his best to lift Port Adelaide to victory. Picture: AAP Images

There was an intense cover of space and the Hawthorn players to stop the Hawks setting up their preferred long chains of ball movement. The “intercept” plays that set up two of the Power’s early goals from Hawthorn turnovers highlighted how the mid-season break (and the long haul from to and from China) had not dulled the Port Adelaide players.

But this did not last longer than 30 minutes. And as Hawthorn created more and more links to the goalfront from the defining plays of loose half-back James Sicily and 349-game veteran Shaun Burgoyne, the Power’s drive to its forward zone was as slow and rocky as a ferry crossing the Tasman Strait during a winter storm.

There were at the start many “in your face” statements from the Power players as they lived to their vow of winning contested football — and building everything in their game from the contest. This defining category continued to work in the Power’s favour in the second term, but there is a fine line between being intense and undisciplined (or stupid).

The repetitive 50-metre penalties the Power players gave away in the second term — to hand the Hawks three shots at goal from which two goals were scored — simply destroyed all the first quarter set up (in particular the 24-point lead).

Brad Ebert cops a shot to the head. Picture: Getty Images

The return of the Port Adelaide problem of winning clearances (10-4 in the Power’s lone-goal third term) but coughing up the ball on the second movement from stoppages easily explains why the Power’s scoring dried up after a promising first quarter.

There was a long-held prayer answered early with ideal productivity and efficiency in attack, the stand-out need from the Power’s season of unfulfilled promise last year. Port Adelaide achieved seven scores — five goals — from 12 inside-50s in the first term.

But, at a time when everyone is trying to find answers on where Port Adelaide sits in this year’s race to September, there is so much fool’s gold to confuse the thinking on the Power. Eleven inside-50s in the second quarter for … 0.1. Eight in the third — for 1.3. And finally, just seven inside-50s in the last term — for a poor total of 38 — says the Power is not creating enough.

Good, bad and battling to avoid the ugly. That’s the real read on Port Adelaide.

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