Koch has ramped up the pressure on Hinkley less than a week out from the season, reinforcing his message that he will not tolerate a third consecutive year outside the top eight.

"Not making the finals - there's no excuses. It's just failure, full stop," Koch told Channel Nine's The Footy Show on Thursday night.

"I hate giving excuses. I just say, look, we failed, we've learnt, we've got to do better and we'll continue to learn and we understand the expectations of our members and supporters, and my expectations, is we play finals each and every year - and high finals.

"We're not going to tolerate a third year [out of the finals] at all and we don't think we'll need to."

Hinkley, who has two seasons to run on his contract, said: "We don't want to be not part of the finals for any period of time, let alone for a couple of years.

"So our challenge collectively, not just mine but David and the board and [CEO] Keith [Thomas] and everyone involved, is to do everything we possibly can to make sure we achieve that."

The Power looked set for a period of sustained success after consecutive finals appearances in Hinkley's first two years as coach, including an agonising five-point preliminary final loss in 2014.

But it's been slim pickings since then and Koch's patience is running out.

Hinkley blamed the club's inability to qualify for the finals mainly on poor ball use and other teams improving and the 50-year-old stressed his team needed to improve "across the board".

"We haven't kept pace with the competition over the last couple of years so our challenge is not only to catch up now but to try and get in front of it again," he said.

"I suppose in one way that's exciting for a coach because you've got to dare to dream a little bit and you've got to dare to challenge what's going on and for us, we're going to have a go at that.

"If we can improve our ball use and we control the ball and be a little bit more paced about the way we use the football, hopefully that will get us back into the game a little bit."

Port Adelaide kick off their season against Sydney next Saturday at the SCG.