PORT Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley is quietly confident Xavier Duursma and Trent McKenzie have avoided serious injuries following Saturday night's 11-point loss to Brisbane.
Counterpart Chris Fagan is not so sure on Dayne Zorko, although the Lions coach says his captain has avoided an Achilles injury after he left the game during the third quarter.
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Duursma went off in the opening term with a collarbone injury, while McKenzie was stretchered off in the last quarter after landing awkwardly on his knee.
But Hinkley says the initial signs are good.
"Xavier looks like he's OK structurally, not a break or anything," he said.
"At the time we were fearing it may have been broken.
"And Trent, we don't know, we think he may have escaped the worst. We'll wait and see.
"On the initial tests, our doctors are very experienced, and are reasonably confident that as an ACL goes, it's probably not that.
"Again, I don't want to go off too early and get it wrong."
Aside from Duursma and McKenzie, Port also had injury scares for Robbie Gray, Connor Rozee and Aliir Aliir, who all spent significant time off the ground before returning.
Hinkley said fatigue "100 percent" contributed to his team losing a 24-point advantage late in the third term.
"I think by the end … maybe we were just a bit out on our legs. Maybe," he said.
"I'm not saying that's 100 percent because Brisbane lifted and took it to another level and we couldn't keep coming.
"I said to the boys, if we can play that way every week, we'll win a lot more football games than we'll lose."
Fagan was unsure exactly what went wrong with Zorko after he hobbled off before the final change, but ruled out an Achilles problem.
Zorko, who missed both pre-season matches after a small procedure on his Achilles, had started the night at half-back.
"He felt something pop in the back of his calf area," Fagan said.
"His Achilles is fine and he's got strength. There's some little theory floating around at the moment that where he had the little procedure, that might be a bit of scar tissue that moved.
"We'll wait and see because sometimes these things can turn into something bigger the next day and we won't really know until earlier in the week.
"I just hope more than anything that we get to see whether he can play a bit of half-back this year and that the injury is not too serious."
Fagan was delighted with the Lions' ability to grind out the victory despite not playing their best football.
He said they had "matured" over the pre-season after losses to Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs in last year's finals series.
"There was a little bit of adversity for both teams and we found a way in the end, so I'm really proud of the players."
