Port leaders Travis Boak and Hamish Hartlett hammer ‘ridiculous’ rumours of rift

PORT Adelaide skipper Travis Boak and his new vice-captain Hamish Hartlett have spoken out on a damaging rumour about the captain and Hartlett’s former partner — and explained how it started.

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A TONGUE-IN-CHEEK joke at a sponsors’ function by Port Adelaide vice-captain Hamish Hartlett that his former girlfriend “might have got around (Travis) Boak” has led to a series of damaging and false rumours about their relationship as teammates — and mates, they say.

“It’s become ridiculous,” Boak, who is Port’s captain, told The Advertiser on Monday.

The Power leadership pair dismissed claims they are at odds — and have split the team base — since Hartlett said he had amicably ended his relationship with Lauren Jones, while Boak has also recently ended his relationship with his own girlfriend, Renee Barendregt.

Boak said: “There are now about five or six different stories about us — and none is right.”

Hartlett added: “Each week, almost every day, it is, ‘Have you heard the latest’. It has become laughable how this has developed into something that is not right. It began as a throwaway line — but it is now beyond a joke.”

@CrowFansSay @travisboak10 Absolutely laughable. One tongue-in-cheek comment at a function and rumours spread like wildfire.

— Hamish Hartlett (@hharts8) April 20, 2016

Boak, 27, is believed to have split with Ms Barendregt just before the AFL season started.
The former couple, who started dating in 2012 before taking a break, had reconciled in 2014.

Port captain Travis Boak with ex-partner Renee Barendregt on the red carpet for the 2015 AFL Brownlow Medal presentation.

Neither Boak nor Hartlett wanted to comment on their private lives or ex-partners in the media.

Hartlett, 25, traces the unsavoury commentary on his relationship with Boak to a “tongue-in-cheek” remark he made at a players’ sponsors function this month when he played the audience for a laugh.

“At that stage, my partner and I had a very civil breakup of our relationship,” Hartlett said.

“The sponsors’ function was on a Wednesday. On the (previous) Saturday — after the (Friday night) Essendon game (at Adelaide Oval on April 8) — the guys were having a few beers. I was not there because I was in recovery with the hamstring (strain). My ex-partner was at the same place; she had a chat with Trav.

“We had that function the next Wednesday. It was a laid-back interview with (function host) Barry Curtin and I wanted to get a laugh with a non-footy chat. Barry asked what was happening in my relationship, you know, life off the football field. I said we had wanted to go our separate ways — after a very, very good relationship.

Renee Barendregt with Lauren Jones, Hamish Hartlett’s former partner. Pic: Naomi Jellicoe

“And, for that laugh, I added, ‘But I think she might have got around Boaky on Saturday night’.”

In the following 17 days, the claims of Boak creating a rift in Hartlett’s private life — and then for the Port Adelaide team to be taking sides to create disharmony at Alberton — have led to further mischievous suggestions of the Power’s premiership aspirations being undermined from within.

This has included unsubstantiated reports that Port Adelaide’s administration ordered Boak and Hartlett to put aside their off-field issues and to present a united front during Saturday night’s AFL clash with Geelong at Adelaide Oval where they stood side-by-side and with arms locked together during the “Last Post” tribute to the Anzacs.

“What has evolved is ridiculous,” Boak said. “There is no disharmony in the player group. We — me and ‘Hammer’ — have not had a falling out.”

Hartlett added: “I wonder if people would be saying this stuff if we were winning? It has become worse because both Trav and I have not been playing well, just as the group has been inconsistent.

“People are assuming there is some underlying factor to what has happened to us on the field. And this (suggestion of a rift between captain and vice-captain and then the full playing group) is not it. “I made a throwaway comment. What has developed from there is laughable, but it is wrong — all wrong.”

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Originally published as Port leaders Travis Boak and Hamish Hartlett hammer ‘ridiculous’ rumours of rift