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Port Adelaide coach Matthew Primus is adamant his team have made notable advances this season despite just one win from seven AFL games.
Port Adelaide coach Matthew Primus is confident his team won't disintegrate like last year despite the club's worrying 1-6 start to the AFL season.
The heat on Primus is set to intensify after the Power slumped to their sixth straight loss on Sunday, with Fremantle overcoming a slow start to post a 12.5 (87) to 7.5 (47) triumph in Perth.
Port Adelaide won just three games in last year's disastrous campaign and appear headed towards another season of doom and gloom.
But Primus is adamant his team have taken notable strides forward this year and said the Power should be judged on more than just their win-loss record.
"We're disappointed and it's been a while since we've had a win now, and that starts to grate on everybody," Primus said.
"But we're in a professional environment and individually we've got to learn to be able to pick ourselves up.
"The sooner or the quicker we drop away from that and decide this is too hard and it's not worth it or I'm not good enough or he's not good enough ... is when you start to disintegrate inside and you start to lose what you're about.
"This group is going to hang tough together and they'll get through that."
Primus said there was no magic wand to turn his team's fortunes around and promised not to make any knee-jerk reactions.
"People will want to say 'drop 10 people, train harder, train longer'. That doesn't have the desired result," Primus said.
"It might for one week, but it's not the way to go about having a good group together and developing and teaching them what they need to do to be very good footballers."
While the Power remain on struggle street, the mood was much better at Fremantle after skipper Matthew Pavlich became the 51st player in VFL/AFL history to reach 500 career goals.
Pavlich copped a heavy knock to his knee late in the opening term, but shrugged off the injury to finish with four goals and another milestone to add to his remarkable career.
"I think the crowd probably knew more about it than anyone else," Pavlich said of reaching the 500-goal mark in the dying minutes of the match.
"It's a good result to get there, but let's move on."
Sixth-placed Fremantle have five wins from seven games but coach Ross Lyon said tough tests against Hawthorn and West Coast over the next fortnight would give his side a true gauge of where they sat in the larger scheme of things.
"It's like a golf championship," Lyon said.
"The third day is a round where everything starts to get sorted out, who's serious and who's going to fall away. I think we're about that time of the season."
