Hinkley, Ginnivan and the outrageous outrage

Jack Ginnivan could not have provoked a more indignant reaction if he had suggested that people in Adelaide were eating their neighbours’ pets instead of pie floaters.

But he didn’t. All he did was to append a comment to Sydney ruckman Brodie Grundy’s Instagram post celebrating the Swans’ qualifying final win over GWS. “see u in 14 days,” it read.

And the world as we know it ceased to exist.

Power coach Ken Hinkley clashes with Hawthorn skipper James Sicily post-match.Credit: AFL Photos

Ginnivan and Grundy played together for two years at Collingwood. It’s the sort of connection, fleeting but intimate and intense, that licenses friendly banter for years afterwards.

It is possible that, in jibing a mate, Ginnivan did not even give a thought to the fact that Hawthorn would have to beat Port Adelaide in a semi-final to get to Grundy and Sydney, or at least thought it was obvious that this was a bit of interpersonal chiacking, not a calculated poke in Port’s eye.

But even if he did know, so what?

Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan and Port’s Jason Horne-Francis exchange pleasantries on Friday night.Credit: AFL Photos

Ginnivan was said to have disrespected Port Adelaide. Firstly, he did not disrespect Port any more than they disrespected themselves with their feeble qualifying final display against Geelong. More to the point, as disrespect goes, Ginnivan could not have given any less offence if he’d cuddled Big Ted and intoned: “There’s a bear in there.”

This was social media, remember, anarchic land of long bows and loose tongues. Perhaps he should have taken a leaf out of the Monty Python playbook: “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”

Jack Ginnivan celebrates a goal against Port Adelaide.Credit: AFL Photos

Port Adelaide chose to take offence. So did others in the industry once they realised there was offence to be taken. Of course, Port chose to be offended. It’s the oldest us-versus-them trick in the book.

And Ginnivan was such a readymade agent provocateur. The outrage machine cranks up whenever his name crops up. The scale of the so-called offence doesn’t matter any more.

When it was about an off-season recreational drug incident, it was fair enough. Then it was for a night at races before last year’s grand final, which might have been fair enough, because it caught Collingwood on the hop. Then it was because he was in a pub – but not drinking – the night before Hawthorn’s elimination final win over the Bulldogs, for which he had his coach’s blessing, and still the tutters tut-tutted.

And now, “see u in 14 days”. See u in stocks. See u in hell.

It was certain as night follows day that Port coach Ken Hinkley would seize on this. Some reports suggest that not even the Port players were particularly triggered. They live in the social media world, too.

But even if some were, nearly everyone who has lived through an episode of this type of extraneous motivation says that the effect lasts for about five minutes once the ball is bounced. Perhaps Port stretched it to a whole quarter. More probably, the real driver was the hurt pride of the Port players after their capitulation the previous week.

In any case, they had to win a furiously contested game on their own wits, and they did, admirably, and more power to them for it. Even then, they were almost overrun, and even Hinkley said they were lucky that James Sicily’s dying minutes shot hit the post. Lucky? Did the Port players take that as a slight? Of course, they didn’t because this time they had the last laugh.

See u in 14 days became see u after the match. Hinkley’s escalation was unnecessary and unedifying, and he knew it immediately and within minutes had apologised sincerely. He and his club have paid a disproportionately high price. Then it was Hawthorn and Sam Mitchell’s turn to overplay their mortification.

Ginnivan is central to the Hokball phenomenon.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

On balance, of course it would have been better if Ginnivan had not posted what he did, if only because he should have anticipated the fury that ensued. He acknowledged as much to teammates during the week. But you can’t indulge the Hawks in their novel Hokball personae and expect total robotism as well. That balance is now for the club to manage.

Of course, it would have been better if Hinkley had kept his mouth shut. Port had won the game, after all.

But what did Hinkley say, exactly? “You’re not flying anywhere, Jack.” Worse than that passes over backyard fences every weekend. Again channelling Monty Python, Hinkley’s affront was at about the level of “I fart in your general direction”.

So it can be seen that the Hinkley outburst and the Ginnivan post that bookended the whole petty episode were alike in that much as they were better left unsaid, there was an element of theatre in it all – and an element of confection in the backlash to both.

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