What defines this Port Adelaide squad?

Port Adelaide must put together multiple wins to qualify for the AFL’s top-eight finals in September — a challenge that has been beyond a confusing player group for too long.

Port Adelaide co-captains Ollie Wines with Tom Jonas after the Power’s Showdown win. Picture SARAH REED

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Port Adelaide has not won four consecutive AFL matches (the equation to play finals this year) since rounds 12-16 last season. That winning streak had the Power reached that well-noted 11-4 win-loss count … and then crashed out of contention to rank 10th at 12-10.

Since then, the Port player group has created a form line to torment all and suggest the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, would have found a lifetime project in the changerooms at Alberton.

It is time to put senior coach Ken Hinkley aside. There is no point in continuing to read between the lines of club chief executive Keith Thomas’ “mea culpa” letter to the fans and members.

The real question at the Port Adelaide Football Club is: Who are these Power players? What defines them? As former captain Dom Cassisi keeps asking: “What do they want to stand for?”

More to the point, when are the Port Adelaide players to take command of their “brand”, as is the talk these days?

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The Power celebrate their win against Essendon at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne on Saturday. Picture: AAP Image/Mark Dadswell

It would be intriguing what responses would come across the AFL community if there was a poll question on what image is created by the Port Adelaide players.

Master AFL broadcaster Bruce McAvaney recently questioned — amid his bewilderment at Port Adelaide’s erratic and nonsense form line this season — that the Power players might be mentally weak or challenged.

In beating AFL premier West Coast in Perth, AFL leader Geelong at Adelaide Oval and cutting apart Adelaide in the second half of the recent Showdown at Adelaide Oval, former St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt noted: “I would not want to play Port if they play finals. They have played the best footy I’ve seen this year.”

This was evident at the weekend when Port Adelaide’s “run and gun” game finally ended a string of failures against Essendon, both home and away. The 126 points achieved with adventurous football marks Port Adelaide’s best score in Australia since putting up 132 points against the Western Bulldogs at Adelaide Oval in mid-June last season.

In ending Essendon’s five-game winning streak — and claiming another top-eight scalp — the Port Adelaide players have proven they can respond when under intense heat.

And this week? Season 2019 also is marked — if not stained — by how these Power players have repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with some of the dumbest football this season.

So who are these men who have become defined by their “consistent inconsistency” this season? Are they in need of a session on the couch, as McAvaney suggests.

Dual captains Ollie Wines and Tom Jonas lead Port Adelaide out on to the ground. Picture SARAH REED

Port Adelaide has been here before with that question of the mental strength of its player squad. From 2001-2003, as the Power dominated the home-and-away series with 16, 18 and 18-win seasons, the Port Adelaide players earned themselves the “chokers” tag by failing in September.

By 2004, the late Phil Walsh, the senior assistant coach at Alberton, and football chief Mick Moylan made sure there was no costly choke after Port Adelaide was a lock for its fourth consecutive AFL finals series. In the last six weeks of the home-and-away season they ensured — with some strategic tests on a particular group of players who had repeatedly failed in the previous three major rounds — that Port Adelaide did not take a mentally weak soul into the September cauldron.

The 2004 AFL premiership trophy at Alberton stands as the reward for dealing with a reality.

Who will do that at Port Adelaide now?

Has the historic shift to two captains — the older, harder Tom Jonas and the younger, more savvy Ollie Wines — delivered a team with a split personality as reflected in the results? Which skipper wants to stand up first to ask his team what they want to stand for?

Port Adelaide spent the summer seeking ways to “connect” at all levels of the team and the football program.

The critically strong bonds expected the team from this program would seem solid based on Hinkley’s remarks after the win against Essendon: “We’ve been committed as a group and connected as a team all the way through.

“I — and the group — have never lost the belief in us as a football team. We haven’t quite played as well as we’d like consistently, but there’s never been a lack of belief from inside the club. That’s something I’m really strong on.

“We believe in this football team and in this football club.”

But outside the football club no-one knows what to believe of the Port Adelaide players. They repeatedly say in defeat that they intend to “learn” and are then seen to make the same mistakes with even more calamitous fallouts.

The next three weeks are to define Port Adelaide, unless the players decide they want to take charge of this task now.