PORT Adelaide coach Mark Williams believes new players could be needed to turn around his club's fortunes after Saturday night's loss to the Brisbane Lions snuffed its finals chances for 2009.

The Power gave up a 47-point lead to lose by 15 points and Williams said his players paid for turning the ball over and not getting it into the attacking arc enough after quarter time.

But he was at a loss to explain why there was such a significant turnaround after the first change, which included two goalless quarters.

"We will be working over summer feverishly to try and work through that," Williams said.

"Obviously we need to get some new players.

"The mindset, the mental belief and courage to keep going is certainly very flimsy at the moment.

"There was a lot on the game. Obviously we still had some faint chance of making the finals. Now it's gone, so that's massively disappointing for us."

It is mathematically possible for Port Adelaide to still finish in eighth spot should Essendon lose its two remaining games, and the Power beat North Melbourne by enough to better Hawthorn's percentage. The Hawks and Bombers play next week.

But for Williams, it was time to rue what might have been with Port's away record now standing at just one win for the season.

"You can get pretty angry after a game like that," Williams said.

"After quarter time we really couldn't get the ball inside 50 until the last quarter.

"Turnovers, not running hard enough, kicking the ball to the opposition: those are the things that hurt us."

Port Adelaide suffered a blow before the game with its No.2 goalkicker Robbie Gray withdrawn after training on Friday night with appendicitis.

"It was disappointing," Williams said.

"Yesterday he trained up here and then went back so, yeah, we certainly missed him. He's been a pretty important forward to us."

Williams praised Kane Cornes, who held Simon Black to 18 disposals, and Alipate Carlile who limited Jonathan Brown to eight. Brown still kicked 4.1.

But the strong work of 22-year-old forward Nick Salter (3.3) was also a positive.

"He’s had a very up and down career," Williams said of Salter.

"It seems like every time he plays a game or two he gets injured and that makes it difficult to get some sort of continuity and build his position in the side."