Port Adelaide believe they have the depth of defenders to cover the loss of experienced backman Jasper Pittard for the start of the AFL premiership season.
Pittard will miss about a month after straining his left hamstring in Sunday's 28-point pre-season loss to Richmond.
But assistant coach Brendon Lade says he's confident a batch of young players can help fill the void left by Pittard's untimely injury.
Lade named youngsters Riley Bonner and Dan Houston as candidates to replace Pittard for the Power's premiership season-opener against Sydney on March 25.
Pittard is yet to have scans but is expected to miss between three and four weeks.
"It's pretty significant, so disappointing for Jasper ... he was playing quite well," Lade told reporters on Monday.
"We have got some good replacements and we're excited by them."
Port have now lost consecutive pre-season games, with both defeats marred by costly lapses - on Sunday, Richmond scored 6.3 to nothing in a 20-minute burst in the second quarter.
"For three quarters we were pretty good and just a little lapse in a quarter again - the same as the week before," Lade said.
"It probably went for 20 minutes yesterday against Richmond and it's something we will address with the leaders and the players."
Lade said a need for slicker forward entries would also be highlighted ahead of this Sunday's pre-season match against Hawthorn.
"It would be nice to have won two games and be flying," he said.
"But when you're winning you can gloss over things and when you're losing, we're actually finding some things we can fix and fix quickly.
"We will work on our inside 50 entries, we had more than Richmond yesterday and are just not quite converting at the moment.
"So we will put some work into that in the next couple of weeks and get that right."
