Alipate Carlile still remembers the memes.

“There were ones going around about the bye having a win against us,” Carlile tells this masthead.

“We’d won eight-and-half games the two years prior to that 2013 season.”

That was the on-field reality at Port Adelaide when Ken Hinkley arrived in late 2012.

Off the field, the club was in turmoil.

“I still remember a game where there’d been 14,000 people at AAMI Stadium and there were more players at the after-match (function) than supporters,” Carlile says.

Fast-forward to Friday night and the Power is preparing to play a sold-out home semi-final against Hawthorn at Adelaide Oval.

The match is Hinkley’s 273rd in charge, equalling Mark Williams’s record for the most AFL games as Port Adelaide coach.

Hinkley has dismissed suggestions it will be his last if the Power loses in straight sets for a second consecutive season

He is contracted for 2025.

HE’S BEEN A TRUE LEADER

Carlile describes Hinkley as the No. 1 driver behind Port Adelaide’s turnaround over the past 12 years.

“There’s been a lot of people who have played their part … but he’s had to manage the whole process, the expectation, the people, the different coaches, the list changes,” Carlile, who featured in 167 games for the Power from 2006-16, says.

“He’s had to adapt at every turn.

“He’s been a true leader throughout the whole thing.

Carlile was on a boat with teammates and partners at John Butcher’s shack, near Victoria’s Gippsland region, when news came through that Hinkley was joining the club.

“We had no real idea who he was,” Carlile says.

“I remember reading a piece from (Geelong’s) Andrew Mackie saying he was the right man for us – a gem of a human and gem of a coach. That gave us a bit of confidence.”

Port’s darkest chapter was symbolised by tarps on empty bays of seats at home matches and massive defeats on the scoreboard.

The death of Power player John McCarthy on an end-of-season trip in September 2012, a month before Hinkley’s appointment, took a huge emotional toll at Alberton.

Hinkley struck the right balance between empathetic and demanding, according to Carlile, in a sign of things to come.

“Choco and Kenny are both very fiery when they want to be,” says Carlile, who met Hinkley for the first time in Milan before playing a 2012-13 pre-season game in London.

“But what stands out is they’re both very, very caring. Kenny genuinely cares for you as a person outside of kicking a footy around so he spent time getting to know us individually as soon as he joined the club.

“It was a pretty dark time in our club’s history, especially after J-Mac.

“But there was a whole different feel that pre-season once we’d come back under Kenny.

“He let us know from the first day that there were things that weren’t up to scratch, professionalism issues and our training intensity was way off.”

BECOMING THE AFL’S ‘DARLINGS’

Port Adelaide became the darlings of the competition in Hinkley’s first two seasons in charge, not unlike the Hawks this year.

Hawthorn has Hokball. The Power’s mantra was “we will never give up”.

It rode the momentum to a semi-final in 2013, ending a six-year major round drought.

Port went a step further the next season.

“For us to come out in 2013 and put the club into a situation where the club got back to what supporters knew it to be, it was unbelievable to be a part of,” Carlile says.

The three-point loss to the Hawks in the 2014 preliminary final at the MCG is the closest Hinkley and the Power have come to a premiership together.

In 2020, they endured a six-point home preliminary final defeat to Richmond.

In 2021, the Western Bulldogs smashed the Power by 71 points at the same stage at Adelaide Oval.

Port has finished in the top four in both of the past two seasons but is yet to win a final.

After a straight-sets exit last year, the Power is on the brink of another.

Hinkley has been under pressure plenty of times before, but the scrutiny has never been greater than this week.

His AFL senior coaching record reads 164 victories, 108 losses for a 60.29 per cent win rate.

The Power has finished fifth, third, ninth, 10th, seventh, 10th, 10th, third, third, 11th, fifth under him.

He is the longest-serving VFL/AFL coach without a grand final appearance.

“Under Kenny, the club has kept being able to get in that top four, top eight so it can challenge for those premierships,” Carlile says.

“Listening to commentary going around from guys who have won one, a fair bit of luck’s in play. You’re riding form, injury, outside pressure, internal pressure, so much goes into it.”

THE HINKLEY BACK STORY

As a player, Hinkley made AFL grand finals but lost all three – at Geelong in 1992, 1994 and 1995.

Then he tasted success – in country footy, leading his hometown of Camperdown to a flag as captain-coach in 1999.

After retiring as a player, Hinkley guided the Magpies to a second consecutive Hampden league grand final triumph in 2000, then Bell Park to a premiership in the Geelong competition in 2003.

In an ironic twist, Hinkley’s first AFL flag came by helping mastermind Port Adelaide’s worst finals result.

He was in Geelong’s coaches box when the Cats smashed the Power by a grand final record 119 points in 2007.

Hinkley added another premiership as a Geelong assistant in 2009.

“He knows what it (the ultimate success) feels like, but not at Port Adelaide,” Hinkley’s friend, Phil Cunningham, says.

*Language warning

Cunningham, now Camperdown’s president, has known Hinkley since he was about 16 or 17.

They have owned horses together.

“A lot of slow horses,” Cunningham laughs.

His mate was “destined” to be an AFL coach.

“Everyone jelled with him and everyone played for him,” Cunningham says.

CAMPERDOWN KENNY

Camperdown had been without a premiership since 1970 when Hinkley returned.

He had been a junior player there, before his 11-game stint at Fitzroy, 121 matches at Geelong and three years coaching Hampden league rival Mortlake.

“When he came to Camperdown … he brought new life into the town and the way he coached – just with his mannerisms and how he handles himself – was the way he coached now,” says Gary O’Neil, who was captain in the club’s second flag under Hinkley and grew up with him.

“He was very positive, which is the way he is now, even though he’s under pressure, in ways where you just believed everything he said.

“He brought so much joy with those premierships.”

The town reveres the Power mentor for that.

Camperdown has not won a flag since.

“I suppose because of that he’s probably the messiah,” Kevin Russell, a former coach of Hinkley, says.

Cunningham reckons it is a widely-held view in Camperdown that Hinkley’s record over the border is harshly judged.

“One minute they’re into him and love him, then they want him gone,” he says.

“It’s pretty unjustified, I think.

“What do you guide as success?

“They’re up around there most years, even though they obviously haven’t won a grand final.

‘BROUGHT UP A FIGHTER’

Hinkley was under immense pressure after the Power’s previous heavy defeat – by 79 points against Brisbane three months ago.

At the time, he told reporters: “I’ve been brought up a fighter, so that’s what I’ll do”.

“He’s a doer who’s worked hard for everything he’s got,” Russell says of Hinkley, who grew up in Camperdown as the seventh of 10 children.

“As a young bloke, he was always very quiet but strong-willed.”

Hinkley occasionally goes back to Camperdown.

Although he is in the public spotlight, he does not enjoy the limelight and is very family-oriented.

“If he does come home, he wouldn’t walk up and down the street saying ‘I’m here’,” Russell says.

Hinkley may be private but he wears his heart on his sleeve.

He fought back tears after his side beat St Kilda at Marvel Stadium in the wake of that Brisbane hammering.

“He’s an emotional beast and he rides it,” ex-Power midfielder Tom Rockliff says.

“Coaches put so much time and energy into each week, and it can take a toll, particularly in the Adelaide bubble, in a two-team town where there’s always pressure to have success.

“In 2020, if we don’t lose that Richmond prelim by a kick, you go to a granny, potentially win a flag and away it goes.”

St Kilda was the first of eight Port victories over the last nine minor rounds on the way to sealing second spot.

With the Power on a roll entering finals, Camperdown locals were as surprised as anyone at last week’s 84-point hiding.

“I couldn’t believe how well Geelong played and how bad Port played,” Russell says.

Hinkley’s hometown is right behind him as he plots a bounce-back win over Hawthorn.

“There’s a handful of Port supporters in the town, but I think generally if your side’s not in the finals, you’re barracking for Kenny,” O’Neil says.

“I’m a Richmond man, but we’re out so I’ve been barracking for Port because I would just love for Kenny to get there and win one.

“He deserves it.

“We’re so proud of him as a town where he’s got to, as an AFL player then coach. He’s one of ours.”

ECLIPSING MARK WILLIAMS

Hinkley will break Williams’s record against Sydney at the SCG next week if Port prevails on Friday night.

Turning 58 two days after grand final day, Hinkley is hoping to join the 2004 flag-winning mentor as the Power’s second premiership coach.

“Even if they don’t taste the ultimate success, you’d have to say it’s been a success for him at Port considering you’re playing at AAMI Stadium in front of the tarps and the club’s completely turned around,” Rockliff says.

“He can be pretty proud. Hopefully they can get it done on Friday night, win the last two games and hold up that premiership cup.”

Cunningham says if the Power was to win a grand final, “Kenny would be fulfilled”.

“It’d be reward for all the work he’s put in because he’s done a hell of a lot there over a long period of time,” he says.

“But he always says ‘whatever will be, will be’.”