‘Can’t refute that’: Port coach Ken Hinkley’s blunt call on Power failure

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley is prepared for the criticism that will come his way after the Power was unceremoniously dumped out of the finals in straight sets.

Port’s 23-point loss to GWS at Adelaide Oval was the fifth sudden-death final Hinkley’s side has lost since 2014, with the Power failing to make a grand final in 11 seasons under the coach who signed a new two-year contract in August.

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Hinkley was asked if he was feeling rising tension at the lack of finals success in the aftermath of the upset loss.

“If I was, do you reckon I’d still be around?” he replied.

“That’s the simple answer … ‘No, I’m not’.

“I’ve got a great support crew that help me coach this football club.

“I’m not worried about what that scrutiny sounds and looks like, but I get that it will come … I can’t avoid that.

“I will handle it – it’s OK.”

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Hinkley offered a blunt response when asked to rate Port’s season.

“At the start of the year we set out to win the premiership and we didn’t do that,” he said.

“That’s my answer to how I rate the season.

“It’s reasonable to sit there and say that we’ve got to get better.

“We can’t refute that … we definitely have to get better if we’re going to win in September.

“We had a great run of 13 wins and we were playing some really strong footy, but the last seven or eight weeks, for a number of reasons, we weren’t near that form and it got showed up in finals.”

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The Power was banged up late in the season with key players Charlie Dixon, Todd Marshall, Scott Lycett and Trent McKenzie hampered by injury.

Hinkley defended the decision to take that foursome into the semi-final, with all having limited impact.

“We took the risks that we had to take around what was available to us and who was capable of playing at the level,” he said.

“There were some really young players, who were very much too young to play at AFL level.

“People can say that we had some injured players or some blokes less than perfect, but I can guarantee that if some of those (young) replacements were out there it would have been a much worse result.

“I think some of the personnel issues that we were dealing with (over the past two months) made it pretty challenging for us.

“But I thought we gathered ourselves pretty well with what we could possibly do.

“Ideally, I would have loved to have a fit Marshall, I would have loved to have had a fit Dixon, I would have loved to have had a fit McKenzie.

“But that’s what happened and they were brave enough to go and play for us as long as they could.”

The Power’s young on-ballers, rightly acclaimed for their strong play during the home-and-away season, were schooled by the Giants in a midfield masterclass, which Hinkley said while painful would ultimately make them better.

“I think it’s really clear that we’ll learn some really valuable lessons from the last two weeks of finals that we’ve played,” he said.

“The game steps up in the contest … it’s not like we were surprised or ambushed in any way, we just weren’t good enough to be able to cope with it.

“It’s great for our young mids because they’ve been highlighted a lot this year through how much growth they’ve had, but every one of us got a valuable lesson in the last two weeks.

“They’ll be fine, they’ll be more than fine, they’ll cope at that level in their careers … there’s no doubt about that.

“They were shown up, no doubt, but they’ll grow from that.

“It’s a hollow ‘We’ll get better’, but I’m not going to spend too much time there.”