Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson has admitted the eight-point loss to the Power at AAMI Stadium on Saturday has dashed the Hawks' bid for a top-four finish and the double chance now appears miles away.
Clarkson said the loss meant Hawthorn's place in finals football was no longer certain, and his side must focus on winning as many of the remaining games as possible.
"Hopefully we can get as many wins as we can in our last four games to try and give ourselves a chance in September," he said.
"Our focus is really just trying to win from week to week and we'll add them up at the end and if it's good enough then we'll get there and if it's not we'll try and go as deep into September as we can."
"But, we haven't even finalised or consolidated our position inside the eight so top four is miles away from our point of view."
Clarkson highlighted a poor run of form early in the season where the Hawks lost six consecutive matches as damaging to their premiership aspirations.
The premiership winning coach said the Hawks had gone some way to arresting that poor start over the course of the last two months but Saturday's 'hiccup' against the Power appears to have all but ended Hawthorn's hopes of finishing in the top four.
"Today is a hiccup. We're just more interested in winning as many games as we can (now) and the top four will look after itself," he said.
"We had a really poor start to the season, we lost six games on the trot between Round 2 to 7 and we're just trying to claw our way up the ladder as best we can."
"We've done that pretty successfully over the course of the last eight to 10 weeks but we ran into a bit of a hiccup this week."
Clarkson conceded Hawthorn was out of sorts and was dealt with accordingly by a pumped up Power side.
Clarkson denied the tough draw against St Kilda last week had affected his troops with Port Adelaide enduring an equally epic battle against cross-town rival, the Crows, in a 19-point Showdown win.
The former Demon said Port had 'backed up' the better of the two sides and when the match was in the balance in the final term, it was the hosts who powered home.
"Today we had a poor day and to the credit of Port Adelaide they made us pay," he said.
"Who's to know. Port Adelaide had a tough game last week against Adelaide too and they had less time to recover from that game and get themselves ready for this one," he said.
"Both sides had fierce contests last week but that's the nature of AFL footy, you've got to back up again and we didn't back up as well as what Port did today."
"We were in front for the greater part of the game but when the whips were really cracking in the last quarter we just couldn't generate enough ball for us to give us opportunities to score."