'He sooked last night': Hinkley, Power great call out club's stars after 'down' performances

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley has called out his stars, following the club's meandering loss to Essendon on Thursday night.

While the Power led for most of the way, the Bombers had 17 scoring shots and took control of proceedings in the final term to run away with the four points.

Hinkley, who will depart as Port Adelaide coach at the end of the season, called out captain Connor Rozee and the club's key players for not performing to the required standard.

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"The disappointing part, our better players, the ones we needed to stand up, they just weren't quite at that level all the way through the game," Hinkley said.

"Collectively, our more senior players were a little bit down on us tonight, and they know that … you've just got to accept that they can't play great footy every week, but we had too many down together.

"Connor's been so good for us so far this year, and I'm sure he would be the first to say tonight's performance wasn't what he hoped he would deliver for us, so you give the points to Durham."

A big fourth quarter saw Rozee finish with 22 disposals, but only three score involvements as he was tagged by Essendon midfielder Sam Durham.

Fellow star midfielder Jason Horne-Francis was also called out for his performance by club great Kane Cornes.

The 21-year-old kicked a quality late goal and found 22 disposals, but Cornes observed that his body language was poor.

"It's probably the first time I'm starting to think with the Horne-Francis stuff, what's it going to look like in a couple of years if he's in a poor side," Cornes told SEN.

"It's the body language for me because he's a competitive winner, but he doesn't cope well when things aren't going his way.

"He sooked last night, there's no sugar-coating that. Then he seduces you into thinking he's going to be that match-winner again with that one-handed grab and finish.

"But consistently, he's got to be better with the body language stuff and infects the whole of the group.

"When he's moping around, when he's giving free kicks against, when he's fumbling and when he's dropping easy marks, the influence his poor body language has on the whole of the group is a dark shadow over the rest of his teammates.

"That's not good enough."

The Power now sit at 1-2, having been blown out by Collingwood in round one and beating Richmond in round two.

Hinkley feels the club has a lot of work to do.

"Our form's not where it needs to be, that's fact. We've played one solid game against a younger team in Richmond last week … we're still getting ourselves going. We need to quicken that up as quick as we can," Hinkley added.