Port Adelaide premiership midfielder Kane Cornes believes AFL players have too much power, following Melbourne's player-driven cancellation of a pre-season training camp.

Max Gawn told SEN on Tuesday morning that he and his fellow players had gone to coach Simon Goodwin to ask if the club could cancel the interstate camp, given a number of players received injuries from a similar camp last season.

Speaking on SEN on Wednesday morning, Cornes understood why the camp was cancelled from a players' point of view, but suggested it could come back to bite them as the season wears on.

“Well done to him (Gawn) for fronting up, (but) I think it’s gone too far,” Cornes told SEN.

“Now this is a footy club — and I think we are pretty hard on Melbourne — who haven’t won a flag since 1964 and haven’t played finals since 2006. So now what’s going to happen is the spotlight will be on them pretty heavily throughout the year and if things don’t go well, in the media we are going to refer back to this defining moment in the pre-season.

“These players now ... are getting far too much time off.

“I’ve spoken to a couple of coaches about it and coaches at the level are really frustrated by how little access they have to their players,” Cornes said.

“Just to explain it further they get eight to 10 weeks off at the end of the year and, depending on how long they’ve been in the system for, they get a further two to three weeks off at Christmas. They get a dedicated day off and a dedicated afternoon off during the week, so you add the last one and it’s about 14 to 15 weeks off.

“I know fans get frustrated about missing easy shots at goal and skill level errors that has to be the reason.”

Cornes used examples from other major sports around the world, and suggested top athletes don't have this much time off.

“If you spend any time with elite level athletes going to the Commonwealth Games ... they are lucky to get one day off a year,” Cornes said.

“If you look at the Australian Open tennis right now, you’d reckon Rafael Nadal is not hitting a tennis ball for 14 weeks of the year.

“I just think it’s crazy and then you get the players refusing to go on a camp. I think it’s a bit of a stretch — and perhaps ‘softie’ is not the right word because AFL players aren’t soft — but definitely player power has gone too far.”