When Ken Hinkley took over Port Adelaide, the club was a basket case.
Tarps covered empty seats, trying to offer physical cover for the fact they were barely getting 10,000 people to games. They parted ways with coach and club great Matthew Primus mid-year in 2012. Popular player John McCarthy died in a mishap on a footy trip to Las Vegas weeks before Hinkley was appointed.
Ken Hinkley leaves the Adelaide Oval after Port Adelaide’s disappointing loss on Saturday.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
When Hinkley was being interviewed for the coaching job, the club had no president, Brett Duncanson had gone and David Koch had not yet been appointed.
Hinkley was said to have got the job no one else wanted as some other candidates withdrew from the process. At the press conference after he was appointed, he was asked, by a journalist with a straight face, if he got the job because he was “the last man standing”. Hinkley smiled, but wasn’t laughing when he said maybe he was “the right man for the job”.
The club was broke and the players broken. It’s difficult to imagine any other coach has walked into their first senior posting in worse circumstances.
Hinkley was correct, he was the right man for the job. An avuncular figure, his first job was to offer fatherly reassurance to grieving and uncertain players. He imposed new standards, introduced a game style and the transformation not only of the team but the club was profound.
The club changed across the board, and Hinkley drove that change more than anyone. More than then-morning TV host/president David Koch, who was influential but had nowhere near the impact of Hinkley.
Hinkley got Port back in the eight, and they won a final in his first year. The next year they played in the preliminary final and lost by just a kick to Hawthorn, who belted Sydney in the grand final the following week.
These achievements should not lightly be dismissed. This history lesson is raised because Port’s sustained period of relevance and relative success........