Round 4 deep dive: Why Port Adelaide’s failures could see them floundering

If you thought the pressure was on Ken Hinkley with his side at 1-3 – they could be 2-10 after the next two months. Here’s how a game plan tweak led to two losses the Power couldn’t afford.

Ken Hinkley says Port Adelaide is “chasing this season really hard and getting ourselves back on track” despite a second upset loss in a row - this time to St Kilda.

But after a 1-3 start to the season and facing a daunting run of fixtures, the Power are running from well behind scratch, without showing the form of a backmarker who could chase down a pack.

A Round 1 clash against Collingwood at the MCG was a tough task, but the next three clashes (Richmond and St Kilda at home with Essendon at Marvel in between) were matches the Power pretty much had to win.

After the horror show against the Pies it was about giving the club the breathing space it desperately needed around the succession plan from Hinkley to Josh Carr, and whether going public with it a year out was the right call.

They needed wins in the bank ahead of the next two months, but they only have the one – against a rebuilding Richmond side – and naysayers who believed 2025 would be a wasted year for the Power will already feel vindicated.

While St Kilda, who were able to hang on for a famous win at Adelaide Oval on Sunday, have showed that matches aren’t won on paper – the Power are well and truly up against it when it comes to its run.

It’s the red-hot Hawthorn at Gather Round, at least at Adelaide Oval, then Sydney at the SCG.

Following that it’s North Melbourne at home, which the Power will be expected to win, then the Western Bulldogs in Ballarat, Adelaide in the Showdown, Geelong at Adelaide Oval, Fremantle out west and then GWS in Canberra after the bye.

It would be daunting for an unbeaten team, let alone one which is 1-3.

Young star Jason Horne-Francis – who shone after coming under the microscope in the opening rounds – said there was hope internally the Power could breathe life into its season.

“It is a tough game these day the AFL, the competition is so close so the first few games matter a lot, and the best thing we can do is move on to next week and Hawthorn and take it week by week and try and win as many games as we can,” Horne-Francis told The Advertiser.

“We went on a 13-game win streak the other year so we can obviously do that again.

“We have to keep playing the way we want to play, keep defending the way we want to defend, trust the coaching staff and system that we have got and back it in.”

Hinkley said things could change quickly in footy, but the Power needed to get back to playing its best footy.

“The run is always hard, we don’t get dismissive of any team in the competition. We know it is a tough competition week in week out,” he said.

“It doesn’t help us to start poorly, there are about four or five teams who are feeling something similar.

Ken Hinkley watching on

“I just have to spend time on how we are going to get better and I can point to history and all those things about how you can get things going quickly in this game.

“Ultimately we need to get this done.

He said he thought the Power could fight back.

“We think we can play pretty solid football when we play our best footy but our best footy hasn’t quite been there at the start of this year,” he said.

“That is our challenge, to bring our best football for four quarters and we know if we don’t, more often than not you are going to get beat.

“We haven’t gotten to the level that we want to be at, at this part of the season. The challenge for us is to get it going as quick as we can.

“You just have to turn up and play, otherwise you will have a season that you don’t want.

“We are in the business right now of chasing this season really hard and getting ourselves back on track.”

To do this, the Power is going to have to cut out the mistakes.

Jason Horne-Francis was one of the Power’s best players in the loss to St Kilda. Picture: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images.

The effort and intensity was there against the Saints on Sunday, areas that were missing against Collingwood and Essendon, with the Power winning the tackle count by 11.

But Hinkley’s side was just hurt too much by their own mistakes.

On three occasions St Kilda kicked goals after the Power kicked the ball out on the full. The final margin was 17 points.

In two of these, both Lachie Jones and Logan Evans had taken good intercept marks but blazed the ball out of bounds after being called to play on and being indecisive.

They weren’t the only two Power players to make mistakes, with a fair few marks you’d expect to be taken dropped against the Saints.

Horne-Francis said the Power’s poor first quarter put the side on the back foot.

“Yes we made some mistakes late on in the game even though we started to play our brand more but that lead that we gave up in the first quarter made our mistakes look worse because of how far we were behind on the scoreboard,” he said.

“They are a bit of momentum killers those ones but we have to learn to deal with that, the game has become even more of a turnover game than it has been so we need to learn to deal with that and move on.”

And then there was the handballing.

As part of its new game plan for 2025, the Power are handballing more and moving the ball quickly.

But against St Kilda the Power often went for the extra handball and found trouble with the Saints able to capitalise on the mistake.

It ended up having 41 more handballs than the Saints and despite potentially going down that route too much, Horne-Francis said the Power needed to back the new game style in.

“That is where we can improve,” he said.

“We are still learning our game style and we are trying to do it to the best of our ability and sometimes we get it wrong but the message is from the coaching staff is to keep going after it.

“We know when it works it works, yeah we might overuse it but we will learn from that and we will find areas that when we are shoulders out we can kick it but our game is a handball game and we want to try and run and carry the ball.”

But is this the right tactic by the Power?

Adelaide board member and Brownlow Medallist Mark Ricciuto said he didn’t think it would work.

“I am not sure if they are capable of running the ball with hand and trying to link up and get numerous handballs through the middle of the ground,” he said on Fox Footy.

The Power’s handballing game has come under fire. Picture: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images.

“When it comes off it looks absolutely fantastic but if it doesn’t work and they turn the ball over generally your defence is not set up and they go down the other end and get a goal.”

Power and Hawks premiership player Shaun Burgoyne said the pressure the Saints brought early on in the game made a handball-heavy game “high risk, high reward”.

“With the handball receives you are inviting (pressure) and if they aren’t crisp then you are inviting the pressure and turning it over,” he said.

Hinkley said it wasn’t the only area that hurt the Power.

“I think you can look at all parts of the game and say there were some critical parts in which we did things wrong in different stages,” he said.

“But ultimately we were in the game right to the end by fighting back.

“Did we over handball? We could have taken the ball over the line, we probably should have hit some more kicks rather than hit some more handballs.

“I don’t think there was actually one part of mistakes or skill errors that was more obvious than the others, we just didn’t maximise our opportunities.

“When we went forward in the second quarter I think we had 4.7 and two out on the full.

“We have handballed the ball more this year, there is no denying that.”

There is also no denying that the Power is playing catch-up.

Can it find form and gain any ground in its testing upcoming run?