PORT Adelaide may finally be off the mark this season, but coach Ken Hinkley has implored his side to not get distracted as they look to resuscitate their difficult start to the season.
After falling to their worst ever start in the club's history, the Power demolished West Coast by 84 points at Adelaide Oval to secure their first win of the year, and breathe some life into their struggling campaign while relieving some pressure on the under-fire Hinkley.
Despite the much-needed win, the Power are still 1-5 and are heading into a clash with in-form St Kilda, and then last year's runners up, the Western Bulldogs, which could ultimately determine whether Saturday's win was a sign of progress or a false dawn.
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"We just need to continue to work and stay in the moment," Hinkley said.
"We can't get distracted. We haven't been distracted even though we've had a few opportunities to get distracted by what's going on. We have just got to stay in the moment and stay focused on how we can continually turn up and improve ourselves as players and coaches and staff and we'll be OK.
"But we know what we've done, we put ourselves behind the eight-ball by a fair way.
"I'm confident in the group, I've said that all the way through. There will be challenges, there always will be but we will stick to task and we will keep our focus on now and we won't get too far away from that.
"So yes, we can look forward to the challenge next week (St Kilda). It's a pretty big challenge. They're in some red-hot form so we will go up there and play as well as we can possibly play and hopefully that will give us a great chance I'm sure."
Hinkley was also pleased that his side was able to give the fans something to cheer about after a difficult start to the campaign.
"We've been in a very challenging spot for a good period of time and very proud of the whole point club and the team and even the crowd. 28 and a half thousand turning up for us," Hinkley said.
"We haven't been giving people a lot of pleasure. Let's be fair, but everyone's stuck together talking and I was really proud of that."
Port veteran Robbie Gray suffered a tweak to his knee which forced him out of the game in the third quarter, but Hinkley believes its "it's nothing too bad".
Meanwhile, West Coast coach Adam Simpson admitted there is no quick fix for his injury-ravaged side whose season is rapidly slipping away at 1-5.
"Well, (we're) obviously nowhere near the standard at the moment," Simpson said.
"Inability to sustain effort and intensity, workrate is not there at the moment and supply is our biggest issue.
"I think the first quarter we might have broken even, looked like they were really up for the fight, the pressure was there and it was a pretty tight game but we just can't sustain it.
"So we've got to get better, that's collectively."
The Eagles are still without a host of key players including Nic Naitanui, Andrew Gaff, Jeremy McGovern and Oscar Allen, but Simpson refused to use the mounting injury list as an excuse for his side's poor form.
"We need to select the fittest team we can get and some guys you've got no choice but to get them fit through playing footy," Simpson said.
"It's not an excuse though, we can't live off it. We've moved on from that. There'll be some residuals of what we went through but we can't sit here every week and say we've had a tough run. So we've got to own it."
