Having continually pumped up the tyres of an underperforming side for the past month, Port Adelaide coach Mark Williams must be entitled to expect a hefty return on his investment against St Kilda Saturday night.

Williams and his coaching staff resisted the temptation to swing vengeful changes as the Power lurched to 0-4, and now they have registered a win it is time for those reprieved players to respond with a rich run of form, starting against the Saints.

Port have an intimidating recent record over the side coached by Ross Lyon, winning 10 of the past 11 meetings between the clubs, most recently inflicting a 53-point drubbing in the AAMI Stadium rain in round five last year.

Williams said his men would take confidence from that but also from the patience his match committee has shown for a team always likely to begin slowly due to a difficult draw and truncated pre-season.

"It gives the players the understanding that we're confident in them and I think showing that is one of the most important things," Williams said Friday.

"Even for Brett (Ebert) last week, we took him off or five minutes, had a chat and he got back on and played fantastic and helped us win, so you learn a lot by that.

"When you get a run on a team, when it's the opposition we think we can still win, so I'm sure they think the same, I don't think there's anything mystical about it, but certainly our players have a lot of confidence going into this game."

One development that has changed things from last year to this is Lyon's greater time to implement his ideas and strategies on a side invariably flushed with talent.

Previously an assistant at Sydney, Lyon will be well aware of Port's recent inability to cope with the Swans' uncompromising style, and Williams said he would be sure to tell his players to perform accordingly.

"I think they can play a couple different styles of footy. They can play fast, shootout style, and we saw the game they played against Sydney where it was probably five goals each or something like that, so they're a well-drilled unit," Williams said.

"There's a lot of what Sydney does in their game plan, and certainly Ross will have looked at how Sydney did and how they played against us, so we'll be assuming there'll be a lot of tagging and defensive work put on our players."

St Kilda have included tagger Steven Baker in a hint at their intended tactics.

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