PORT Adelaide coach Mark Williams all but conceded yesterday that his team — last year's beaten grand finalist — was already out of the finals race less than halfway into the season.

Yesterday's 11-point loss to Sydney at AAMI Stadium — after again conceding the lead in the last quarter — has left the Power struggling with just three wins and six losses.

And its woes deepened when half-forward Brett Ebert, who kicked six goals in his best performance for some time, was carried off with an ankle injury and is unlikely to play against Fremantle at Subiaco next Sunday.

Williams admitted he was worried about Port's finals chances. "You have to be realistic about it," he said. "It's going to be very, very tough.

"A tough, hard game, football, it rips the guts out of you. Certainly, emotionally, the players put a lot of effort into the game. We didn't get over the line, but they kept at it.

"If we had taken our chances today, we probably would have almost been in the eight.

"Is it (Port's season) over? Gee, I think we are really competitive. I think most sides that come up against us feel that if they walk away with a win they have earned it. We continually try to push that."

Port may need to win nine or 10 of its remaining 13 games to make the finals. After Fremantle, Port plays Carlton at home, Geelong (Skilled Stadium), Richmond (home), Western Bulldogs (Darwin), North Melbourne (home), Adelaide (home), Fremantle (home), St Kilda (Telstra Dome), Carlton (Telstra Dome), Collingwood (home), Melbourne (home) and North Melbourne (MCG).

Williams denied Port was struggling because of the proverbial "second-year blues", meaning his young stars who had played a huge role in the Power reaching last year's grand final were struggling this season to reproduce that form. He challenged the media to name young players who had not improved, but he also didn't come up with a definitive answer to Port's woes apart from suggesting maybe Port's season last year was inflated by narrow wins.

Sydney coach Paul Roos called his team's performance as a "tremendously courageous win".

"They (Port) had all the momentum going, their good players started to get hold of the ball, they were going forward regularly," Roos said.

"It's hard to swing momentum in a game of footy, but for our guys to dig in was great. There was some really individual brilliance from some of our players that got us back into the game and eventually got us over the line.

" … both teams were tired at half-time. It takes a lot out of teams when it's high scores. In terms of a footy game I thought it was great because we had that free-flowing first half and that good, really hard tussle in the second half. I hate to see games where they are all the same. I thought today it was a really good mix of both styles of footy and it turned out a super game."