The blowtorch is on Ken Hinkley — and dialled up to 11 — after Port Adelaide were humiliated in a home final against Geelong on Thursday night.
Hinkley has regularly faced heat from fans and local media due to a poor finals record, in charge of Port Adelaide since 2013 but yet to bring home a premiership (his 272-game tenure without silverware is the longest in VFL/AFL history).
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Ken Hinkley faces the music after finals shocker.
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He was already booed by the club’s own fans this year, and questions were raised about his future at Port.
Those questions are again surfacing after the 84-point disaster at Adelaide Oval (the club’s second-biggest AFL finals loss ever) that will now see them face either the Western Bulldogs or Hawthorn in a do-or-die final next week.
If they lose next week, it will be the second year in a row they have bowed out of the finals with consecutive losses.
“The big one now for the Power is Ken Hinkley’s future. He’s got a year to run on his contract,” 7NEWS chief AFL reporter Mitch Cleary said after the game.
“The thought all season has been that the Power need to stand up in finals if he is to continue on in 2025. How much pressure is around this man next week in the semi-final?
“Yet to play in a grand final, this next week will be magnified in Adelaide.”
Star Seven commentator and Collingwood great Dale Thomas said the spotlight was right on Hinkley now.
“It’s a tough caper,” Thomas said.
“The last nine weeks of the season, what they put together, was near on outstanding after a really bad loss.
“We’ve seen other sides go through periods — Port Adelaide rolled the Swans by 112 points — so no doubt for Kenny it’s not a great night but the vultures start to circle pretty quickly over here, and he needs a better performance, a much better one, next week.”
Hinkley said he and his stunned players had no other choice but to try and move on quickly.
“The next 24 hours, we have to live with that performance,” Hinkley said.
“We have to live with the facts … our last three or four finals haven’t been at the level we need them to be.”
He said the entire club including “coaching group” and playing group had to reset.
“I know, and I get, that it falls back to the head coach in some ways,” he said.
“But the reality is, we’ve always said, this is all of us doing this, this is all of us trying to achieve something together.
“It’s not one individual but there’s a figurehead and, for me, I sit in that spot.
“I work really hard to give the best results we can possibly get.
“And my team of coaches and my team of people in the footy department do everything they can not to have that result.”
The home-turf humiliation ranks behind Port’s 119-point capitulation to Geelong in the 2007 grand final as the club’s heaviest finals loss.
And it was compounded by dual All-Australian and vice-captain Zak Butters being substituted because of a rib injury.
Alarm bells rang for Hinkley when Butters, back-to-back winner of the AFL’s most courageous player award, couldn’t return.
“He’s rated the toughest player in the AFL by his peers and he couldn’t go out there again and play … he must be reasonably sore,” Hinkley said.
Butters will have scans on Friday as the Power try to reset for a home semi-final final against the winner of the Western Bulldogs versus Hawthorn elimination final.
“How do we handle it and move forward quickly? Because we have to … we have got to find a way,” Hinkley said.
Asked if there was mental scarring from losing their past four finals, Hinkley replied: “I can appreciate that question because they’re the facts and I always deal in the facts.
“The reality is, we believe the group are better than that.”
Port Adelaide’s last four finals
* 84 point loss to Geelong, 2024 qualifying final
* 23 point loss to GWS, 2023 semi-final
* 48 point loss to Brisbane, 2023 qualifying final
* 71 point loss to Western Bulldogs, 2021 preliminary final
– With AAP
