Power coach Mark Williams was disappointed with the loss at the SCG pointing to the fact that despite many of the key statistical indicators went the Power’s way, there were far too many players down on form and an inability to capitalise on the work done. Here’s what he had to say in his post-match media conference.

I thought it was a pretty poor game by us. We seemed to struggle all day. It was good that they kept at it and ran out the game in the last quarter but we didn’t take all that much out of that. We didn’t give up which was good, but we didn’t really show any of the flair or excitement that we’ve been showing over the last few weeks.

Any reason they were a bit flat in the middle?

If you look at the direct comparisons, the players that played on our playmakers I suppose, Sydney will be talking about how their players really didn’t get too much of it either, but they still won the game. We won the first possessions and we won the clearances but we didn’t do too much from them. And if you look at the hard ball gets we dominated those, but all they did was tackle and swooped on us. We practice that a lot but today it didn’t work very well. Sydney were coming off a couple of losses and we’ve been winning for a while, so that always needs to be factored into it. But we came up here keen to play and we didn’t produce so that was disappointing.

If your measure is playing finals and you’re now trying to build a side to get back there, how do you think you stack up having played Sydney?

Well you know you come up against the grand final side from the last couple of years and they’re mentally tough and mentally prepared for the game. It was put on them to say whether they were going to attack the rest of the year, whether they were going to stand up and fight again, they talked themselves into giving it one more go and now they’re still alive in that arena. But for us, we’re always about the next challenge and seeing how we can stack ourselves up and what we learnt from today. We’ll say that we’re not good enough and we need to be better than what we are to be where Sydney is as far as the readiness to play in those huge games.

So, if a loss is used to improve you, what do you want to take out of this one?

Minute by minute you have to prepare, and minute by minute you have to be prepared to do that little bit more for your teammate and no matter what the circumstances or the opposition – the last couple of weeks we’ve played sides that have been on the bottom of the ladder without a win so it’s been that mentality of getting yourself up and making sure you weren’t ambushed; this week it’s certainly a different focus, it was playing a quality team with their backs against the wall.

The Cornes – Goodes contest. Where did you want that to go?

Well if you look at Adam he didn’t touch the ball much and neither did Chad, so it was a nil-all draw if you like, but unfortunately we’re not playing soccer so we’d like to get a bit more out of it. You could put that to two or three more match-ups, but like Adam the others did enough to get Sydney the win. The inside-50’s we won, if you keep looking at all the stats that should be positive, we looked pretty good. We stuck at it and played okay to average as far as I was concerned. Not enough players touched the ball, not enough players had an influence on the game and if you have that many players down you’re not going to win.

The use of Thurstans in the ruck, were you just trying to do something different?

Toby has played in the ruck a few times this year and at that stage it probably worked okay. Halfway though the second quarter I think we got to ten points (down) and I think they kicked the last three goals, which gave them a nice break at half-time. Just to change it up was good and it was nice that Toby could have an influence in the last quarter.

What was the biggest issue in getting players free and creating some run?

The mindset of the different players was different. Their players were very much to stop us, our players were trying to make the play. They were looking to counter-punch. If you look at the clearances and first possessions you’d say that they were very successful at it. They also ran the ball really well out of defence and linked it all the way down the ground, so we need to work on that. If you look at our tall forwards they did nothing today, so that was a disappointment from where we’ve been – White, Tredrea, Lade, Cornes – none of them could mark the ball in the forward line.

Is that also about supply?

It’s got a little bit to do with that. We went inside-50 enough times. It’s a combination of a lot of things.

Were there any positives to take out of the game today?

I thought David Rodan played particularly well – he got a lot of clearances and hard ball gets – so it was well done to him. I thought Bentley played really well on O’Keefe, he’s an All-Australian and great player. So they were two people who stood up. And Ebert caused them a lot of trouble for a small forward, he probably should have kicked five – he missed that last one – but he had a good day.

Did their inaccurate kicking flatter you in the end?

I thought towards half-time they were really dominant, but after half-time they weren’t. You know you have those times in a game where you have to look where they’re kicking it from and all those sorts of things. The psychology of kicking goals and wanting to take the lead and wanting to go further ahead is a little bit different when you’re coming off two losses, there’s a little bit of doubt in your mind as to how good you are. You have to factor all of that in. I’d be assuming that Sydney will be flying now, so we’ve played them back into form.

When your players sit down this week to reassess your goals for this next block of four games, where will your focus be, on the Sydney game or on the next game?

We’ll move very quickly onto playing Geelong, they’re in really good form. We always take a little bit out of the game. You always learn a little bit out of history, but certainly you want to get out there in the present and make history yourself in the future. At the club we learn from it, we take something from it and we move on to the next challenge.

Do you think the players will take out of this game that it’s a harder competition that perhaps they’ve believed over the last month or so?

No, our guys know it is a hard contest. The last few weeks I’ve said that any team can beat any team without any doubt. That’s how the competition is right now. If you bring your best game to the table you can beat any side any time.

• Don’t like the questions asked by the media? Get your question answered by Choco every week after the game at Choco Uncut.