Carlton's backline curse continues to haunt the club with the much-improved Paul Bower likely to miss the rest of the season with a shoulder injury.

Bower injured his shoulder when he was heavily tackled by Geelong's Steve Johnson in last Saturday night's 56-point loss to the Cats.

After having scans earlier this week, Bower will meet a specialist on Thursday to decide on whether to have season-ending shoulder surgery.

Bower's injury is yet another body blow to the Blues defence, which has had major problems stringing together a settled unit.

The Blues have had at times been without first choice fullback Michael Jamieson (shoulder) centre half-back Jarrad Waite (suspension), tall defender Bret Thornton (knee), running half-backs Andrew Walker (shoulder) and Ryan Houlihan (hip) and stopper Jordan Bannister (hamstring).

"It is hard to settle a back six when a few go down," coach Brett Ratten said.

"Paul Bower might be out for the whole season. He's got a shoulder, AC joint - it gets determined today whether it's surgery which will probably be the season and if it's not surgery, it won't be the season.

"But we've got Mark Austin in the reserves and he's playing good footy. It's a bit of a shame they (the VFL) didn't play on the weekend so it's bit hard to bring a kid up after a rest but Aussie will play sometime during the year."

While Walker and Houlihan are still a long way off from resuming, the Blues defence will be boosted with the return of Waite from suspension for the clash with Port Adelaide on Sunday at AAMI Stadium.

And according to Ratten, Thornton should be much better against the Power after looking rusty in his first match back from his knee injury against the Cats last week.

But the Blues coach expected the Power to offer no reprieve for his back six as he believed they would be hard to match-up and enjoyed good delivery from their midfielders.

"Last week (against Fremantle) they only had 38 inside 50s and they win by five goals, it's an amazing stat," Ratten said.

"Their efficiency going forward is very good - they rotate the forwards very hard, they put different talls and smalls and try to destructure backlines so that's our challenge to make sure we've got the flexibility to combat all-comers down in that front half."

Ratten was angered at the suggestion the Blues could be classed as easy beats after Port's Chad Cornes had said his club was over their hardest part of the season.

"If Chad thinks we're a team that they can go downhill skiing on, they might have a bit of a challenge on their hands," he said.

"The great thing for us is we've beaten them in the NAB Cup. They weren't at full strength, we weren't quite at full strength either so it will be a great challenge.

"They'll try to beat us outside the contest and we'll try to beat them inside the contest and it will be a battle of wills and who can get that advantage during the day."

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