Port Adelaide’s season played out almost perfectly until their disastrous Preliminary Final defeat, and ruckman Scott Lycett has detailed what went wrong on the night.
The Power won their first final over Geelong in a comprehensive performance by 43 points and were favourites heading into the Preliminary final against the Western Bulldogs.
However, they were jumped from the start and eventually went down by 71 points in a big upset.
Lycett said many players were underdone heading into the clash, however it was still a “very disappointing” performance.
“You work your ass off for 12 months from the start of the pre-season to get to that point, we got back there after losing against Richmond (in 2020) and obviously it's very disappointing on that night but as Ollie (Wines) said, there’s plenty of positives to take out of it,” Lycett told SEN SA Drive.
“We had a lot of guys go out with injury, and we had a squad mentality and we still managed to win a lot of games.
“I still think a lot of guys for a lot of the season were pretty underdone, coming off big injuries.
“I think we’re going to get back into pre-season, I’m sure Kenny (Hinkley) has got some tough drills lined up for us, I’m sure we’re going to get smashed.”
As for what went wrong on the fated night against the Dogs, Lycett pointed to a familiar problem during the Power’s season, one they hope to fix over the off-season.
“It’s a culmination of a lot of things, obviously we didn’t just turn up on the night,” he said.
“I still have the belief, if we had of played the way we did against Geelong in that first final we could have beaten anyone.
“Obviously, we want to play like that every week, and it was a bit of a trend throughout the year that we weren’t there in the first quarter and then we were playing catchup, and that’s probably something we have to look at in the pre-season.
“We did that too much this year, especially in a prelim final when it counts the most, it’s disappointing.”
The 29-year-old is well valued at Port Adelaide, the club recently choosing to trade out younger ruckman Peter Ladhams and back in Lycett as their number one man moving forward.