Tom Rockliff opens up on the impact Michael Voss had on the Port Adelaide Football Club

Tom Rockliff doesn’t know if Ken Hinkley is missing Michael Voss. He definitely won’t be if the Blues heap more pain on the Power today. EXCLUSIVE

Over the past couple of years at Port Adelaide we had a special individual rating after games.

Not how many possessions you got, or how many tackles you laid or how many goals you kicked.

But rather what you were like as a teammate during the game.

As senior assistant coach at the Power, Michael Voss was big in driving this. As Vossy faces his old mate Ken Hinkley at the MCG the question will be asked whether Port Adelaide is missing him this year.

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Vossy was probably the closest to Kenny out of the coaching group, as you’d expect a senior assistant would spend the most time with the senior coach.

I think Kenny loved having him there, they worked really closely together as a senior coach and senior assistant coach, and they had a great connection – probably the best out of any coaches there at Alberton.

The ratings were important. You can talk yourself into playing a good game if you haven’t played well and you can talk yourself into playing a bad game even if you have played well.

But Vossy was big on how you rated yourself as a teammate.

Were you able to identify situations on the ground that others weren’t?

How quickly could you shift your mindset back to being that of the team rather than the individual?

Brent Montgomery, Michael Voss and Ken Hinkley. (Photo by Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images)

Were you drifting off when things weren’t going well? Or did you start to look up and stop staring at the grass?

If someone was down how could you help them and how could you get back to that really calm state that most benefits the team when you are out in the field?

He was pretty big on that and it was big to build that, he came up with a saying – what made you at your best – and you sort of reflected on that.

He was big on what sort of teammate you were today, it was an important thing for the Power over 2020 and 2021.

We had a big focus on connection and resilience, I think when you are connected as a group and you see that mentality that we are stronger than anyone else it builds a lot of self-belief and what not.

He was able to instil that in the group over a period of time.

He organised team breakfasts and activities away from footy to build those connections that helped us so much on the field.

It wasn’t just him, it was a lot of the other coaches pushing this message as well, but as senior assistant Vossy was the main driver behind it and I think it had a real positive impact on the playing group.

I’ve known Vossy for a long time and I think this is the space he has considerably developed in during his period between being senior coach at Brisbane and now at Carlton.

When I was at the Lions, he became a senior coach there at 33, which is so young and he really had no existing experience.

Michael Voss has made an instant impact at Carlton. Picture: Getty Images)

He had been a champion at playing the game and he inherited a club that was sort of at a turning point and then within his first 12 months to two years the whole club dynamic changed with a different footy manager, a different welfare boss and a new CEO.

So there was a fair bit of instability in those first two years and then we started to turn a corner and I think we were good enough in the back-end of this time.

Once you have five years’ experience clubs want to play finals and we weren’t able to do that.

But in our fifth year, when he departed the club, we actually ended up missing finals by a kick after the siren.

So we could have potentially played finals under him in that year.

I think for such a young coach, to not have a great deal of support, particularly early on at Brisbane, made it really challenging for him.

He was plugging holes everywhere so he actually couldn’t really focus on what he had to do which was really honing in on being a coach and building relationships.

I think early days he struggled to identify that everyone was a little bit different in the preparations and things like that.

Because he was so meticulous about the way he went about it, how much of a competitor he was and how good he was.

He is such a competitor and it does take time to get used to it. At Brisbane, I’ll admit that I struggled with it at times, just the ultra-competitiveness of him.

But that is probably more of a reflection on me rather than him.

I think he learnt a lot at Port Adelaide after a couple of years out of the game first as a midfield coach and then eventually as a senior assistant.

Michael Voss and Ken Hinkley at Alberton. Picture Sarah Reed

Not only about himself but about playing groups.

The last couple of years in particular he was on the bench so he was the direct link to the players to Ken up in the box.

When I came to Port Adelaide from Brisbane he was the midfield coach, I’d already had him for five-years at the Lions but to have him working with you one-on-one was incredible.

You start to form a really close relationship with them because they are your line coach, your direct link.

They are probably the ones that you probably spend the most time with, you don’t necessarily spend a great deal of time with your senior coach, it‘s more your line coach.

I went through some tough times there for different reasons but he was one of the ones who really reached out and made it feel like it was on a personal level.

He took me out to dinner and we just sat there for three or four hours and spoke, it was huge for me and I think that ability to connect with me on a personal level is something that I still hold dear about Vossy.

I always thought he would make a very good senior coach the second time around.

You often see it in sports in America and Europe, particularly soccer where in some cases the more times you get sacked the better your reputation becomes.

But he was never really given that opportunity to redeem himself.

He applied for a few jobs and I think he was at the point where he thought, do I want to continue doing that and not getting a gig?

I think it was really smart by Carlton to give him a go.

Michael Voss made a huge impact at Port Adelaide. Picture: Sarah Reed

They’ve started the season really well, although they lost to Gold Coast, but I’m not really surprised by Carlton’s start to the year so far.

I think they will still have challenges ahead, they won’t just cruise through and finish top four.

They still have a lot of work to do but you can see the way they want to play. Vossy has them playing a strong contest game, they want to make sure they are really good in that contested possession space.

And they have enormous talent on the list that for various reasons hasn’t been out there.

Patrick Cripps has clearly been carrying an injury over the past couple of years while Charlie Curnow just couldn’t get out on the field.

He hasn’t blown up in the coaches box yet but once they start to come under a bit of pressure Vossy is such a competitor I think he will.

But he is such a winner, he has always been one and I think he will end up a winner as a coach.

I don’t know about this year but in his time at Carlton I do think they will taste the ultimate success.

This combative style Carlton are playing really suits them, you can see that Vossy has a clear plan for them and they are executing it.

I don’t know if Ken is missing him, he probably does since it has been a tough start for Port Adelaide.