If AFL flags were handed out like Logies, then surely Ken Hinkley’s Port Adelaide would emerge as the 2024 premiers. Not only would Hinkley prove the impartial people’s choice for the Jock McHale Medal, but he’d probably pull the industry votes as well.
Chris Fagan, the opposition coach who voiced his disappointment at Power supporters’ booing Hinkley after the Brisbane Lions thrashed Port in round 15, would also win a nomination. Fans and football insiders with no skin in this finals game relish the prospect of the AFL’s oldest coach holding up the premiership cup.
Chris Fagan and Ken Hinkley.Credit: Getty Images
And when you consider the intriguing similarities between what the two coaches have achieved and endured over recent years it makes sense that they have proved a source of support to each other this season both publicly and privately.
Hinkley – the AFL’s second-oldest coach – despite being booed, heckled and Bronx cheered by Port fans in June, has lifted his team to second spot on the ladder going into September.
Hinkley’s coaching contracts with Port always seem to come after some public duress and his past few years have often been hellish, too, in terms of home town and supporter backlash pointing to his finals record.
The Power have never bottomed out under Hinkley. His home-and-away winning percentage exceeds 61 per cent while his finals record sits at 41 per cent. And yet 2024 marks his fourth top-four home-and-away finish in five years.
His finals record is one bone of contention with a vocal segment of Port supporters, while another seems to have been the level-headed demeanour his players love. For some reason, Hinkley, whose paternal style has resonated with the team from the hot-headed brilliance of Jason Horne-Francis to Charlie Dixon, Willie Rioli and Ollie Wines, has never spoken the language those Port fans expect of him.
For Fagan, the pressure has come from the outside in the form of a protracted legal saga that emanated from allegations of racism from some First Nations families at Hawthorn, which he has always denied. Unlike Hinkley, the internal support for Fagan has never been questioned.
Hinkley became publicly choked up the week after the Lions debacle when Port travelled to Melbourne and narrowly defeated St Kilda. Fagan’s tears poured privately earlier in the season after he flew to Melbourne to attend mediation at the Human Rights Commission but failed to achieve the meeting or the resolution he sought.
Both coaches would admit that the pressure has threatened to overcome them at times this year. Hinkley supporters, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said his emotional outburst after the St Kilda game was the culmination of almost four years of parochial home town and contractual pressure.
Club director and former captain Warren Tredrea early last year described Hinkley’s relationship with his club as “untenable” and was subsequently swept onto the Port board by the members’ vote. He responded “good call” in June on 5AA to a caller who described the coach as “delusional” and a “con artist”. Strangely, neither David Koch nor any other director publicly censured Tredrea or spoke up in Hinkley’s defence.
Fagan’s fluctuating season after last year’s four-point grand final loss has again led to his coaching coming under significant media scrutiny. Occasionally, that scrutiny has worn heavily upon Fagan and his public appearances early in the season sometimes reflected that. Ultimately, after looking early on to miss finals, the Lions finished fifth, marking their sixth successive September appearance.
Like Hinkley, his win-loss record is impressive. Over the past six seasons Fagan sits top of the tree, just ahead of Chris Scott in win-loss terms – and yet, like Hinkley, his game plan and match-day coaching prowess have been targeted by some commentators as coming a distant second to his largely lauded man management.
Hinkley has yet to reach the last Saturday in September, but has coached Port into their seventh finals series in 12 seasons. His finals record is identical to Fagan’s (five wins, seven losses).
Chris Fagan and his Lions turned their form around after a poor start to 2024.Credit: AFL Photos
Hinkley came late to senior coaching and had to be virtually strong-armed into the Port job after narrowly missing a good handful of jobs. At the end of 2012 he took over a shell-shocked group of players grieving the accidental death of their teammate John McCarthy and led the reshaping of the culture at Alberton.
Several key 2004 premiership players who will gather at the club on Saturday for their 20-year reunion have referred to the selfish habits among the team Hinkley inherited and systematically eliminated. The off-field leadership, rebuilt and overseen by Koch and Keith Thomas in the early years, deserves credit too, but since Hinkley moved in Port have ceased to be a basket-case club.
The Lions, too, had fallen into the basket-case category on and off the field. Just as the AFL jettisoned Koch into the debt-ridden Port, the league’s then new boss Gillon McLachlan installed Greg Swann into Brisbane as CEO. Swann appointed Hawthorn’s football boss Fagan as coach and Luke Hodge, who played at Brisbane for his last two seasons, said Fagan had repaired the Lions’ “fractured culture”.
Senior AFL media analyst David King said of Hinkley last September after Port’s straight-sets finals exit: “I think Ken is a good, average AFL coach. I think he’s Kenny average and that’s fine. The game plan that they play, for me, exposes their lack of talent in certain areas more than any other game plan.” This about a coach who has been rebuilding on the run for more than a decade.
King is not alone in his thoughts on Fagan. Footy Classified host Craig Hutchison is another among a few – but he has also continually targeted Fagan as lacking the match-day coaching skills to win a premiership. King recently described Fagan as a “pretty good” coach with whom the Lions should stick unless they could attract “greatness” in the form of Chris Scott. In late May, King said he believed “this year’s over” for the Lions adding: “There’s nothing wrong with Chris, but this guy [Scott] is a different beast altogether.”
When the Lions lost to Collingwood by a point two weeks ago, relinquishing a top-four spot, King said that the Lions would have beaten Collingwood if Scott were coach.
What Scott, Fagan and Hinkley have in common is that they have the Midas touch when it comes to attracting top-end talent to their club as well as developing prodigious young talent. Geelong have enhanced their reputation as a destination club under Scott while Hinkley continues to do the same.
Fagan has transformed the Lions into a destination club from a side from which talented young players seemed desperate to depart. Lachie Neale was his headline act, but then came Charlie Cameron, Joe Daniher, Josh Dunkley and Tom Doedee.
To state the obvious, what Hinkley and Fagan do not have is premierships. And if Scott remains the coaching benchmark, it seems incredibly harsh to judge Fagan – or Hinkley – against Scott’s achievements in an 18-team competition.
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