Why the marquee AFL recruits want to come and the blue chip draftees don’t want to leave Port Adelaide
HOW has Port Adelaide gone from an AFL wasteland on the nose to a destination club that marquee recruits want to join and blue chip draftees don’t want to leave?
Port Adelaide
Don't miss out on the headlines from Port Adelaide. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Dixon pays tribute to Cornes for development
- Port confident Wines will re-sign
- Watts emerges as future leader
- Eight reasons why Port can win the flag
OLLIE Wines made a very good point that was lost last week in the ‘will he, won’t he, why not now?’ debate that rages over the signature of every star player coming out of contract.
“The club I’m at is very welcoming, they’ve done everything for me and my family and they do everything for interstate players coming in,” the Victorian midfielder said.
“From our perspective there is not really a go-home factor because a lot of our boys are interstate and we’re a family as it is over here.”
It was also Wines’ mum who five years ago when her son was drafted by the Power said she thought he was going to “footy hell” but Alberton in fact had turned out to be “footy heaven”.
So how is it in that time Port Adelaide has gone from on-the-nose and without much hope to becoming a destination club that marquee recruits want to join and blue chip draftees don’t want to leave?
Paddy Ryder, Charlie Dixon, Tom Rockliff, Jack Watts, Steven Motlop, Jack Hombsch and Jared Polec have all found their way to the Power from rival clubs.
Wines, Chad Wingard and Sam Powell-Pepper have been drafted and re-signed, following in the footsteps of Travis Boak and Robbie Gray who don’t look like leaving any time soon.
Notable departures are Jarman Impey, Jackson Trengove and Troy Chaplin, but even in the free agency era you’d still have to go back to Shaun Burgoyne in 2009 to the last time Port Adelaide supporters had their hearts broken the same way Adelaide did with Patrick Dangerfield, Melbourne with Tom Scully, Hawthorn with Lance Franklin and Geelong with Gary Ablett.
There is a common theme to player retention at Port Adelaide and it starts with coach Ken Hinkley, who like some of his players in the past, might have had good reason to leave last year but instead chose to stay and until at least 2021.
“He’s just a great bloke, sometimes you click with people and Kenny has my number. He can really push me and drive me to be better. He’s a real leader, he has a genuine care for his players and he just draws you in, so he was a big drawcard for me. There is no sort of crap in the way, he can hit you between the eyes when he needs to, and I think that’s what I needed.”
- Charlie Dixon
THE COACH & CAPTAIN
Those who know say Hinkley is not only a very good coach but a brilliant salesman - one of the best they’ve heard in their time in footy - and his belief and care for his players resonates with them.
An ‘every man’ people person, he relates to all walks of life having coached everywhere from Camperdown in Victoria to the AFL and has a particularly strong connection with those from the country given his background.
“They’re very well led by Ken who seems to get to know the players and can be very persuasive,” retired 300-gamer and four-time club champion Kane Cornes said.
“Jack Watts, Charlie Dixon and Steven Motlop had a lot of interest from other clubs but chose Port Adelaide and Kenny would have had a lot to do with that.”
Hinkley knows his potential recruits inside out before they even get to the club, so when they meet it’s as though the relationship has already started.
Big on relationships, he has an open-door policy with his players and staff at the club and even to an extent with the media who he chats with at length before every season.
“The players love him and they work with him,” premiership captain Warren Tredrea said.
“Kenny knows the player and what they want. If they don’t want to live in Melbourne, if they don’t like doing media or have had unfair pressure or expectation, he can relate to that.
“He recruits them on where they want to be in footy and how they can get there.”
Hinkley is also renowned as being a straight shooter who will be brutally honest with his players who are left under no illusion as to their spot in the team.
Then there’s the skipper in Travis Boak, who got the job the same time Hinkley arrived and his influence has been huge.
When a potential recruit comes to town, Boak meets them at the airport and opens the door to his home which now extends to teammates like Powell-Pepper who is his new housemate.
“Adelaide was the best place for a young family and Port Adelaide has given me the opportunity to set up my future. That is where Ken Hinkley was really important as I was making my decision, as was Travis Boak in catching up with me a few times to explain how I could help Port Adelaide.”
- Tom Rockliff
CONTRACTS
Length, timing and value, Port Adelaide is prepared to gamble but mostly gets it right.
There is a general consensus the Power moves early on a player, quickly with a contract and is prepared to pay, but the sales pitch is holistic including the wider footy program and lifestyle which is individually tailored.
It may concede it got the long-term contracts for Matthew Lobbe - who has since left - and Hamish Hartlett - who the club later suggested he look elsewhere - wrong.
But it’s got plenty right too and by letting Trengove and Impey leave last season it was able to sign Motlop and Rockliff to lucrative four-year deals as their replacements.
“They’re generous with their contract lengths - Motlop being offered a four year deal is very enticing,” Cornes said.
“And I think the players believe they’re not too far away from challenging (for a premiership).”
“Definitely Kenny made a difference. We had one year together at Geelong where they still hold him in high regard. Kenny was really impressive when I met with him - and that certainly helped get me over the line to Port Adelaide.”
- Steven Motlop
STABILITY
MOST clubs will view four positions as their key pillars - the chairman, CEO, coach and captain.
Port Adelaide enters the 2018 season with the same men in those four jobs for the sixth year in a row.
Chairman David Koch, coach Hinkley and captain Boak started in 2013 while chief executive Keith Thomas took charge of a financial basket case in 2011.
But it goes further than that. Current national recruiting manager Geoff Parker started at the club in 2010 and current list manager Jason Cripps in 2011.
Like any family they’ve had their moments but the foundation has been strong enough to survive the turbulent times.
It almost turned ugly last year when Koch vented his anger to members after Port’s elimination final loss which sparked speculation Hinkley would walk.
It wasn’t the first time Koch went public with his criticism of the players. The year before he labelled their performance a “disgrace” and there was a verbal to and fro between him and Boak which made for unnecessary angst.
Yet they’ve not only survived but thrived and emerged stronger for it. Blood, as families and Port Adelaide have come to learn, is thicker than water.
INDIGENOUS PROGRAMS
WHEN Paddy Ryder was looking for a new home in 2014 he toured Port Adelaide’s facilities and met all the usual people you’d expect at a potential suitor.
But then he met with club greats Byron Pickett and Gavin Wanganeen who played in the Power’s 2004 premiership and remain closely linked to the club through its indigenous programs where they are ambassadors.
The Power is seen as the industry leader in its indigenous work under Paul Vandenbergh and according to Wanganeen the players are proud of it and want to be part of it.
“The indigenous programs at the club are second to none, they are so pro-active in that space and so open and willing to make sure they are rolled out regularly,” Wanganeen said.
“It makes the indigenous boys feel special and proud to know that their club feels so strongly about it, and that they can get involved, learn more about their culture and give something back.
“But most importantly it helps them with their own identity, to feel at home and connected to their people.
“There is the brotherhood and I don’t catch up with them too often but when I do there’s always a beautiful little handshake we do and there is that bond.”
Last year when Steven Motlop was deciding between Adelaide and Port Adelaide, he said he felt a connection to the Power because of brother Daniel who played there and cousin Marlon who is one of the club’s Aboriginal programs co-ordinator.
“Kenny is just so personable and it’s more about that relationship with the player than anything else. You work on that first and then the rest comes, the football will take care of itself. That’s what I really liked about Kenny.”
- Jack Watts
CULTURE
HARD to describe but easy to feel - but only once you’re part of it.
The current culture or closeness of the group could probably be traced back to when Jackson Trengove (2011) and Boak (2012) put a flag in the ground and re-signed at a time when the Power was a shambles on and off the field.
That bond has only expanded and strengthened in the years since.
“They’re a pretty close group,” Cornes said.
“Jarman Impey and Jackson Trengove left but all the others they really wanted to keep, they have.
“Jasper Pittard last year I thought he was a good chance to leave but he decided to stay and probably for less money (than what he was offered elsewhere).”
Tredrea believes Boak’s decision to stay - albeit for good money but when he was so strongly pursued by Geelong near his home in Torquay - is the foundation of it.
“Your skipper being a Victorian boy and staying for so long says a lot,” Tredrea said.
“He saw belief in the vision the club put in front of him all those years ago (2012) - whether it was reality or just a plan but he bought into that.
“They’ve built a culture and I catch up with them every now and then and there’s a feeling that they’re not going to leave their mate.”
Port Adelaide also celebrates its long and rich history, which forms part of the appeal to players who want to be part of it.
Club greats Russell Ebert and Tim Ginever are still involved at Alberton and Ginever’s guided tour as part of an induction for new players and staff is somewhat legendary.
FAMILY
HAWTHORN is known as the family club but Port Adelaide has strong claims to that title too.
Families like Williams, Cahill, Ebert, Obst and Tredrea have had multiple generations play for the club.
Hinkley is one of 10 children in his family and has just become a grandfather at 51.
“They’re big on family,” Tredrea said of Port Adelaide.
Not just home grown ones but as Wines said this week, the club has done “everything” for him and his family.
Port isn’t alone in the AFL for looking after interstate families when they visit and helping organise tickets to games across the country, but the Power also runs a weekend at Alberton specifically for parents which coincided with last week’s trial game.
“We bring all our parents over from everywhere and introduce them and this year we have 11 new lots,” Hinkley told FIVEaa.
“We’re all gathering to say hello for the first time of the year, there is some expectation amongst the parents, excitement among the players and mums and dads, and this footy club does an amazing job of including the whole family.”
AFL ruling opens door to wild three-team mega trade
Port Adelaide has the green light to strike a simple deal and get trade period moving – or a complex three-way move with two other clubs and multiple players.
The high price that would deliver Houston to Collingwood
Key meetings have all but ruled Carlton out of the Dan Houston race as Port Adelaide sets its asking price. Is Collingwood paying too much?