Inside story: How Chad Wingard’s spell at Port Adelaide was broken
CHAD Wingard wanted to be a Port Adelaide player for life. But the moody superstar relied solely on his talent, prompting the Power to tire of the enigmatic game-breaker.
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NOT even a hypnotist could convince Chad Wingard to leave the Port Adelaide Football Club three years ago.
“I was devastated when I was told I’d been traded,” Wingard says of his prophetic moment at Alberton crafted by hypnotist Isaac Loman. “When I came out from the hypnosis, I was so relieved (to still be at Port Adelaide)!”
Under a spell, in August 2015, Wingard revealed his deepest feelings about being a Port Adelaide player for life. The club’s base at Alberton was his comfort zone; close to family at Murray Bridge and amid adoring fans who could find no fault in a seemingly carefree “natural talent”.
Wingard on Friday arrived at his new football home, the Hawthorn Football Club in Melbourne, after being one of the headline acts of the AFL trade period. And there are many Power fans still wondering how their pin-up boy came to fall out of love with Port Adelaide, and how the club lost patience with its much-lauded game breaker.
For a club with just one finals appearance in the past four years, it was the moment Port Adelaide stopped making compromises for its enigmatic star. And it is another reminder to every AFL player that talent, even once-in-a-generation talent, is not enough in a league demanding more and more of its well-paid athletes.
Port Adelaide premiership midfielder Kane Cornes sums up Wingard in saying: “Chad’s not even scratching the surface of what he could be.”
After his first 50 AFL games, Wingard drew comparison with the game’s truly dedicated stars, such as two-time Brownlow Medallist Chris Judd. And his first four AFL seasons delivered him a club champion medal (2013) and All-Australian selection twice (2013 and 2015).
But Wingard’s story in 2018 is loaded with moments that took the Port Adelaide Football Club to the edge. It split Ken Hinkley’s coaching group. And it proves again that while one player cannot make a team, one player can break a club.
Port Adelaide started the season with an internal theme demanding the Power be “unconditional” in everything it did. Wingard was seen, particularly by two assistant coaches, but not Hinkley, as “conditional”, based on what he did at training, where he wanted to play on the field and how he was to meet expectation at Alberton.
Critically, the end-of-season “exit” review with Hinkley and senior Port Adelaide staff, in particular football boss Chris Davies, in late August broke the bonds of trust between club and player.
Wingard was told, in a very firm tone, he had to change. He was challenged on his attitude and work ethic.
There was the concession that Port Adelaide and Hinkley also needed to change in how the club and senior coach handled and nurtured its puzzling star. But Wingard found the sessions confronting.
“Ken was asking Chad for some things from him for 2019 which he thought he might not be able to deliver,” Davies said. “Chad felt like he’d got to a position where he was a bit complacent and stale.”
Wingard speaks of the “hurt” from “what a lot of people have said” of him. His biggest critics – the most forceful being former Power players such as Cornes and premiership captain Warren Tredrea – irk Wingard. He speaks of “experts” with a bitter tone, giving away how they get under his skin. So it would have been a shock to hear of his failings from within the club.
“There’s a lot of things I have to work on,” admits Wingard. “I was willing to do that at Port Adelaide. (But) we came to a mutual agreement where it was best for everyone to part ways. I need a change to rejuvenate. I need a new challenge. For myself, my footy, my happiness, it is better to move on.”
Wingard’s manager Tom Petroro was at Alberton within days of the exit sessions. Port was sensing it would lose Wingard as a free agent at the end of his contract in 2019.
Four clubs chased Wingard. He chose Hawthorn four days into the 10-day trade period after, as Wingard puts it, “I did not know what I would do for a long time”. “But when I came to my decision, I don’t regret it.”
The breaking point in Wingard’s hold at Port Adelaide came in early June. The three-point loss to Hawthorn at Launceston on June 2 put him under intense focus, inside and outside the club.
The media reviews of Wingard centred on a player who was moody when asked to play in attack rather than the midfield. Tredrea’s column in The Advertiser that week pre-empted all that was to come in that telling end-of-season reviews with Hinkley.
Tredrea, whose “unconditional” approach as a player allowed him to achieve all he could with his talent, wrote: “I’m so frustrated seeing (Wingard) play at the moment. At his best, he’s desperate, manic and with a win-at-all-costs attitude.
“Sadly, at the moment he’s bereft of confidence, not working hard enough and appears disinterested.”
This view was held by some of Hinkley’s lieutenants, who felt it was time to drop Wingard from the AFL line-up. Hinkley not only showed faith in Wingard, but restored him to the midfield battery, taking delight in Wingard’s match-winning 31 touches against AFL premiers Richmond at Adelaide Oval that week.
Now there was a wedge between Hinkley and some of his assistant coaches, in particular senior assistant Matthew Nicks who has moved to Greater Western Sydney.
Wingard says he is leaving Port Adelaide with “no bad blood”, and has thanked Hinkley and the club for improving him as a player and person.
But his most ardent Port Adelaide fans will argue it was up to Hinkley and the Power to make Wingard the complete footballer, a title they fear will unfold at Hawthorn.
Tredrea notes Wingard “relies on natural talent”. It will not be enough, not even at Hawthorn.
And if Wingard struggled with the tone of his end-of-season review at Port Adelaide, he should note his new boss, four-time premiership coach Alastair Clarkson, is the true master of demanding everything from his players ... unconditionally.
