PORT ADELAIDE'S next coach should be an outsider who would "shake the thing up", says former Power chief executive officer Brian Cunningham.

Amid reports that coach Matthew Primus has left Port after being told he would not lead the club in 2013, Cunningham - Port's CEO from its inception in the AFL in 1996 until the end of its 2004 premiership season -has shared his long-held concerns about the Power's plight.

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Cunningham also told Melbourne radio station SEN on Monday morning that he felt the club's administration had been "sitting on its hands" for several years.

He said the Power would find it difficult to lure a high-quality coach after respect for the club had been eroded in recent years.

"The thing that concerns me is the respect that the club has lost over the journey," he said. "Having had five or six years of top-line performance, that respect is now gone. How do you attract players and, more importantly, how do you attract coaches?

"I don't see anyone who’s a Port Adelaide person who's necessarily in line to coach. I think someone needs to come in and shake the thing up."

In more recent times, Cunningham spent four years on the South Australian Football Commission, a period in which he says he saw the club "declining".

"I've been concerned since probably 2008," he said.

"I think they've lost their supporter base. We always had a very, very strong core of Port Adelaide supporters and we had average crowds of around 30-32,000. The average crowd now is around 20,000. There's a whole range of reasons for that, but I think (the club) didn't pay enough attention to them.

"At time I really wondered in the 2009-10-11 era that the club was sort of sitting on its hands in a sense of really actively going out and working with the membership base and getting sponsors on board, etc. I was critical of that."

Cunningham, who will turn 60 on August 14, said he was keen to help his old club but it was unlikely he would return to the Power in an official capacity.

"I don't think so. I had a long time, a great time, and I think your time comes and goes, and I reckon I had my time," he said.

"There's a few of us around the place that are saying, 'Well, how can you help?' But I think you've got to be on the inside to help and I'm not at the moment."