Jason Horne-Francis slammed over ‘petulant’ acts against North

Port Adelaide star Jason Horne-Francis has been torn to shreds after losing his cool and turning his back on his coach on Saturday.

AFL great Matthew Lloyd has torn shreds off Jason Horne-Francis and his ‘petulant’ acts on Saturday.

The 21-year-old Power midfielder lost his cool against his former side in a fiery few minutes in the closing stages of the third quarter.

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North Melbourne players got under the skin of the former No. 1 draft pick who had to be calmed down by several teammates and coach Ken Hinkley.

As Connor Rozee, Zak Butters and Hinkley attempted to cool the youngster down, Horne-Francis turned his back on the trio and tried to walk away before being dragged back to the conversation.

Watch the questionable moment in the video player above

He tried to walk away as his coach was talking.

The ugly scenes did not sit well with Lloyd who said the act of turning away from the club’s leaders was as bad as it could get.

“Jason is a star and he’s playing wonderful football, but he just lost all of his emotions in this game, he got sucked in,” Lloyd said on Channel 9’s Sunday Footy Show.

“He got sucked into a point where he didn’t want to listen to his coach, and he was dragged back by his players.

Butters pulls JHF back to listen to the coach.

“But this is to a point where Jason has to grow up. His coach is talking to him, trying to calm him down and he walks off on him.

“That is still petulant behaviour. And you do not want too many players in your team like that in my opinion.”

Lloyd added: “It’s nearly droppable behaviour. If your coach is talking to you and you are walking away from your coach not wanting to hear him out.”

Horne-Francis spoke after the contest and said he was still learning to keep himself in check when rivals attempt to rattle him.

Ken giving him a talking to.

“I’m still trying to learn from those moments and keep my cool a little bit more,” he said.

“It was just a little one-time thing in the game. I just need to keep getting better at it, keep talking to people and keep finding ways I can control myself.”

Asked what Hinkley, Butters and Rozee discussed with him at the final change, Horne-Francis said: “I just think for me to go out there and play my natural game, which is being first to the footy and hunting the ball and not worrying too much about the other stuff.

“You’ve just got to control the controllables — and that’s what they were telling me.”

Hinkley post-game launched an impassioned defence of Horne-Francis.

“I was just trying to help him a little bit and calm him down because he’s an emotional player,” Hinkley told reporters.

“I love that about him, he’s such a fierce competitor, and he’s playing against North Melbourne, who we all understand where he came from.

Horne-Francis was in the thick of it. (Photo by Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

“I think the thing we miss a little bit with ‘Hornet’ is he has to work damn hard for any free kick, yet he can give them away a little bit easy, I think. I would recommend that he gets to earn his free kicks a lot more than most people, and I’m not saying he does everything perfectly, I just think he gets held onto and all sorts of treatment, but he keeps playing hard and going at the footy.

“Sometimes it boils over … players like that don’t always get it perfect for themselves or the team, but god you admire the way that they go about it.

“He was frustrated and he let his frustrations boil over into stuff he couldn’t control. When he gets like that we’ve just got to try to bring him back down.”

Port showed great resilience to hang on for the win that improved its record to 4-3, putting the Power’s season back on track after a disastrous start.

“It was a heated contest,” Horne-Francis said. “They (brought) their best today – and their best is pretty good – so we had to try and match it.

“Credit to them, they played a really good brand of footy. We were just happy to hang on in the end.”

— with NCA NewsWire

Originally published as Jason Horne-Francis slammed over ‘petulant’ acts against North