A sore Port Adelaide will welcome the arrival of the break afforded by the AFL's 150th anniversary Dream Team game, albeit knowing it will cause headaches for their coach.

Power and Dream Team coach Mark Williams faces decisions surrounding the fitness of a handful of his own players, who if selected for the one-off anniversary match will miss out on needed rest.

It will produce a conflict between his clear enthusiasm for the fixture and the pragmatic, results-first ethos natural to all professional coaches.

Vice-captain Shaun Burgoyne and ace tagger Kane Cornes both trained only lightly on Wednesday and it is known Burgoyne has been playing with the help of consistent painkilling injections over the past month.

Master utility Chad Cornes is already out for a month due to a badly broken right ring finger and Power tagger Dom Cassisi doubted Burgoyne would play against Victoria if he was less than 100 per cent.

"I've got no doubt Shaun will put the club first," Cassisi said.

"If he's not right, he won't play, just like any other player involved in that game."

Toby Thurstans, Daniel Motlop, Brett Ebert and Michael Pettigrew also trained well within themselves on Wednesday in preparation for a meeting with Essendon on the fast track at Telstra Dome on Sunday.

Cassisi said that while the Bombers were sure to react strongly following their pounding by Collingwood on Anzac Day, Port would concentrate on attacking a suspect defence rather than frustrating the home side's attack.

"We'll go out and start the game very attacking, we've got no reason to play otherwise," Cassisi said.

"Every team has plan B and C, but we'll go out there with the attacking style we want to play and see how that goes.

"Essendon seem pretty different to last year and in previous years.

"They obviously play an attacking style of footy and appear to be taking the game on.

"They would be a bit worried about our pace and run too, so it should be a good battle - we know we need to play four good quarters and in the last few weeks we've showed some really good passages of play.

"By the sounds of things, they'll be fired up.

"It sounds like they've copped a bit in the press this week and we were in a similar position a few weeks ago.

"Teams always want to respond to that and we're well aware they'll come out firing."

Paul Stewart and Greg Bentley are tipped as the "two-man replacement" for Chad Cornes.

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