PORT Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley has slammed his "spooked" side for blowing a golden chance to stay in the hunt for finals after their 17-point loss to Fremantle at Domain Stadium on Saturday.

Hinkley all but conceded their finals chances were gone after the loss, which slid them to a 6-7 win-loss record, two games and percentage outside the top eight.

"It’s incredibly tough from there, you’ve got a two-game break from the top-eight sides now with nine games to go," Hinkley said.

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The Power were expected to come out firing after the three-point loss to the Western Bulldogs the week before left their finals hopes on a knife-edge.

But they were flat early, getting smashed in the contests and conceding territory and possession in the first 10 minutes.

They snatched the lead back by quarter time but the warning bells were ringing clearly for Hinkley.

"Early in the game it felt like we didn’t really want to win almost,” Hinkley said.

"That was just the mindset of the players out there was that they were spooked by it all.

"That was a really poor performance particularly off the back of what we’ve been able to deliver.

"We just didn’t work hard enough in the game for long enough and Fremantle did.

"It was like Fremantle were 6-6 and the roles were reversed.”

Talking points: Fremantle v Port Adelaide

Exasperation about that lack of hunger and courage was the common theme of Hinkley’s press conference.

He fired up even more when the topic of the lost midfield battle was raised.

Fremantle had the two best midfielders in Lachie Neale (33 possessions, eight clearances) and Michael Barlow (43, two goals, eight tackles and nine clearances).

And those numbers had Hinkley seething.

"You can’t lose two battles as badly as we lost two battles today," he said.

"We had someone go to Neale early and they sent Barlow to (Robbie) Gray and Barlow just went on his way and Neale just went on his way and we were changing lots of things but chasing our tail.

"Their midfield got on top, not just on top, they dominated the game.

"Something goes missing, there’s a part of us that’s not courageous enough at the right times. We just need to be more courageous.

"We just didn’t turn up playing hard enough for long enough, we had everything to play for we just couldn’t perform when we needed to."

While full-forward Jay Schulz finally returned in the SANFL from his long-term back injury, and Jack Hombsch isn’t far away, Hinkley confirmed that early indications suggested young ruckman Dougal Howard had ruptured his ACL during the third term.

"It looks like he’s done his knee," Hinkley said.

"That’s the thing you’ve got to understand, the game gets taken away so quickly through other things.

"It shouldn’t be through your own performance.

Hinkley said his post-match speech threw out the challenge to the players heading into their bye.

"I just thought we didn’t want it enough when we needed to and let’s explain that to each other. Let’s understand why we didn’t keep going," he said.

Another disappointment for the Power was their inaccuracy, especially from late in the third quarter to the end of the match when their return was 0.6.

“When you get your opportunities and you miss them consistently that just demoralises you,” he said.

“And it goes down the other end and they score some big goals … you’ve got to be harder than that in the mind.

“You can’t let those things demoralise you like they do to us at times.”