THE PORT Adelaide players and coaches spent much of Sunday night and Monday morning searching for answers after the club’s second, costly, final quarter fade-out for the season, this time against Carlton at AAMI Stadium.

One common theme to emerge from the in-depth game review was the apparent lack of run from the Power players in the last term and their inability to stem the tidal wave of Carlton goals.

Coach Mark Williams lamented his teams’ missed tackles and poor decision making under pressure and also considered the loss of Paul Stewart to injury and the club’s ability to back up after a long road trip to Perth, but quite simply, he said his players seemed to be “really out of legs” in the last quarter.

“We looked really seriously at our fitness. That’s one thing we really looked at,” he said on Monday.

“I think we have won five out of 11 last quarters this season, which probably reflects where we are [on the ladder] at the moment. We looked at that and we also looked at the players we had available.

“On the night, I probably didn’t notice the amount of turnovers we made early in the game when we were really over the top of Carlton. We probably should have been a fair way further in front, but in the last quarter, our fitness or lack of run was the number one factor.”

Last year the Power, having contested the Grand Final, made an unusually late start to the pre-season and their preparation was further disrupted by the departure of head fitness coach, Darren Burgess, who accepted a job with the Australian soccer team.

Up until now, Port Adelaide had denied a lack of fitness was the reason behind the club’s inconsistency within games this season, but after speaking to the players on Monday, Williams said the theory might have some validity.

“You have to put that [the loss of Burgess] together with the fact we had five weeks less training than normal. Darren leaving was certainly a big disruption to our program,” Williams said.

“It was very difficult, but we were lucky to be able to get Dan Comerford at that time of the year. For Dan to come in without knowing any of the players or their past performances and the demands they were able to handle, it’s been a really collaborative effort to keep everyone on.

“It’s certainly not best practice to lose your head fitness coach in the middle of January.

“You can never catch up [the time] that you’ve lost at the beginning of the year. The Western Bulldogs are probably a team that stands out. From what I’ve heard, they did their biggest pre-season ever.

“Our numbers, in a shorter period of time, were up there, but the five-weeks on the legs was something we did miss, but you’d probably take that every time because the opportunity to play right through the finals is terrific.

“You can say, ‘why don’t you train three or four times a day?’ or whatever number of times we trained plus one or two more, but you’ll break all the players down as well.”