Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley has labelled the Power's 41-point home loss to Richmond as their most disappointing performance of the season.
The home side were again blitzed in the first quarter, with Richmond kicking 8 goals and putting together a matching-winning 37-point lead.
"We had not so much a poor first quarter, we had a reasonable ten minutes at the start but it's the back end of the first quarter," Hinkley said.
"But yes, they're clearly becoming an issue.
"You put yourself too far behind - you eventually just can't keep coming back from that far back.
"We don't want to be relying on being able to comeback because we know that's dangerous, and more often than not it won't happen for us."
Back in the coach’s box after being sidelined last week with a virus, Hinkley said his biggest concern was the limited number of contributors.
"It was disappointing, you go through our players and we probably only had four or five players that we thought were above pass," Hinkley lamented.
"I wouldn't say lack of effort, I would say lack of polish and composure.
"Our method's okay but it's the execution of our method, and at the moment, because of the opposition and what they've been able to do to us, we haven't handled their pressure which has made us look poor in lots of areas of the game."
After a perfect start to the season Port have now lost two in a row and Hinkley believes other teams are looking a lot closer at how the Power are playing, which is making it much hard to move the ball forward.
"That's what's happening," Hinkley said.
"AFL football - they give you a little look, they let you skip away a bit and then they start to focus on what we're doing well.
"That's great. We welcome that because the only way we're going to improve is if we experience that and have those good teams come at us and expose us on what we need to improve, because we are still in that renewal stage."
Hinkley defended his decision to play just one ruckman in Jarrad Redden. Port lost the hitouts by 10 but won the clearances by seven, and he believes that strategy didn't cost them the match.
Hamish Hartlett had another quiet day with just 10 possessions, and Hinkley has urged him to keep working harder and fight back as Richmond superstar Brett Deledio did this week.
"To respond like we've seen with the game of Deledio today, sometimes there's no easy thing to do - it's about a fair bit of hard work," Hinkley said.
