PORT ADELAIDE coach Ken Hinkley has talked up the significance of Saturday night’s win over West Coast, calling it a ‘massive’ win.
The Eagles were fourth and the Power third before the match and both are among the next rung of clubs hunting top sides Hawthorn and Geelong.
"The significance of a win over here at Subi is obviously in the scheme of the football season is massive," Hinkley said after the 14-point victory,” Hinkley said.
"For any team to come over here and come away with the win and for us especially, we have had a really strong start to our season. It has been a tough start to our season, there have been a lot of tough, hard games and we have been able to keep rolling right to the end."
Again the hard-running Power surged home in the final quarter after leading by just a point at the last change.
They continually charged into their forward line, the lopsided inside 50 count of 22-6 in the final term proving decisive.
"It was a pretty dominant last quarter again, we just didn't hit the scoreboard the way we'd like to," Hinkley said.
He was effusive in his praise of ruckman Matthew Lobbe, who was gallant against the Eagles' All Australian pair of Nic Naitanui and Dean Cox.
"For Lobbe to go at them on his own, two high-quality players. I think Matt Lobbe was as good as any player on the ground tonight," Hinkley said.
"When you consider what he had to go up against and what he gave us, he had an outstanding game."
Port Adelaide's thoughts quickly turned to the next challenge, against Geelong at Adelaide Oval next Sunday, April 27.
"The important thing for us is that it's at Adelaide Oval, we get all our supporters there, we get all our members there and we fill the place up and we make it as hostile an environment for Geelong as best we can outside the fence, then we try to do the same thing inside the fence," Hinkley said.
"We have no doubt the quality of the team that is coming over and we look forward to that opportunity to have a real go at them and see how we go."
However, win, lose or draw, Hinkley said he wouldn't be reading too much into the result.
"Not really, I think it will be good for us because hopefully we'll learn something from the game like we did tonight and hopefully we'll continue to improve," he said.
"It's round six that's the hard part, it's hard for a coach to sit here and say, 'it will give us a great guide'. There's a long, long way to go."
