PORT Adelaide star Zak Butters was sent to hospital after suffering a rib injury in Thursday night's horror qualifying final loss to Geelong.
Following a quiet first half, the gun midfielder failed to return to the field after the main break and was substituted out of the game for Quinton Narkle.
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He was sent to hospital for precautionary scans, with the extent of his injury expected to be known later on Friday. Coach Ken Hinkley was hopeful Butters would be OK to play in next week's semi-final against either Western Bulldogs or Hawthorn.
In his post-match press conference, Hinkley said the 23-year-old got a "whack to the rib" and could not go on.
"It's a pretty clear indication he's pretty sore at the moment, but we'll wait and see what happens with scans tomorrow and hope that he's OK," Hinkley said.
"He was voted the toughest player in the AFL by his peers, and he couldn't go out there and play again … it must be reasonably sore for Zak to be like that."
The injury was part of a sour night for the home team, as they watched a 20-point half-time deficit balloon to 84 points by the final siren as Geelong ran in waves and found holes aplenty inside its forward 50.
After being bundled out in consecutive finals last year, Hinkley is again sure to feel the heat ahead of next week's semi-final against the winner of Friday night's contest between the Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn.
Hinkley said he would remain positive about his team's chances to turn things around, conceding they didn't handle Geelong's heat as well as they needed to.
"It's about our coaching group and it's about our playing group and our footy club. I know, and I get it, that it falls back to the head coach … this is all of us doing this, this is all of us trying to achieve something together," Hinkley said.
"It's not one individual but there's a figurehead, and I sit in that spot.
"The season suggests we've been better than that consistently. We have not turned up in a final and played the way we wanted to, that's fact."
Hinkley said Port Adelaide had no choice but to move on quickly ahead of another match at Adelaide Oval.
They generated 53 inside 50s to Geelong's 57, but from midway through the second quarter, the match was never close as the Cats again proved too clean and too precise in September.
Hinkley backed his decision to select Charlie Dixon over Todd Marshall – who has barely played in the past eight weeks – and said it would be unlikely they would make many changes next week.
"We've got to go back to what we think is more like us," he said.
"Our last five or six weeks, we haven't been like that.
"The group's been pretty consistent with what they've been able to do and I'm going to trust they can be as consistent again, as soon as next week.
"I try to look at things in a positive way as best as I can.
"Glass half-full, every experience you get you have to learn from and you have to deal with.
"We've had another experience we certainly don't like, and we want to be better than that, but our next chance is our chance to show we're trying to get better again.
"I'm going to back them in and say I think they'll deliver a much better result than that the next opportunity they get to play.
"They've been able to do that for a good period of time, bar, as you're going to ask me, in finals."
