ESSENDON coach James Hird has stuck by his club's new fitness regime despite yet another soft-tissue injury, but concedes he will ease up on his players during the week.

Defender Michael Hibberd injured his quad when leading out of the forward line in the third quarter of Saturday's match against Port Adelaide and was subbed off for Nathan Lovett-Murray.

The 22-year-old is the latest of a long line of Bombers players to have suffered recent soft tissue injuries, including Patrick Ryder, David Zaharakis, Angus Monfries, Michael Hurley and Brent Prismall.

"It's an ongoing debate with how hard you work your players, but the one thing we want to do with this group is get them to a point that when we get a chance ... in finals, we can beat the best teams," Hird said.

"If you're not fit enough and if you're not strong enough you can't do it.

"Will it be this year or next year or the year after? I'm not sure. But we're going to continue to work hard and our players are going to continue to work hard so that when the opportunity comes we can take it."

Hird said that, given the mid-week calf injury to star ruckman Patrick Ryder, players would be eased into training next week.

"As has happened with Paddy [Ryder] during the week, he had nothing after the game [against St Kilda], it just came on slowly during the week," he said.

"Unfortunately the game is so hard now that things creep up on you and we have to be very careful over the next three or four days with our players."

The Bombers scored a commanding 50-point win over the Power, a six-goal-to-none final term sealing the result.

Although the Power have struggled immensely in 2012, Hird said the result proved that when the game was played on the Bombers' terms, most opposition sides couldn't match them.

"Today, when we played against a team that wanted to show that they stood for something and we stood with them for a half and then kicked on," he said.

"Once we started to get a little bit more control of the ball around the contest I think the game was able to be played on our terms.

"We know that when we play the way we want to play we can beat most teams."

Harry Thring covers news for AFL Media. Follow him on Twitter: @AFL_Harry