Mark Robinson: Ken Hinkley will coach Port Adelaide in 2025 – and the club’s anger over fine is justified

Ken Hinkley will coach Port Adelaide next season – you can lock that in, writes MARK ROBINSON. But a certain AFL figure won’t be welcome, with the Power filthy at the league’s embarrassing overstep.

The night of drama at Adelaide Oval has left Port Adelaide wiser after the event.

Firstly, Ken Hinkley will be coaching Port Adelaide next year – you can take that to the bank.

The 12-year coach will become a 13-year coach regardless if Port wins this weekend and hereon officially ends the blood-sport discussion about whether Hinkley will be sacked or not.

He won’t be at West Coast next year. He won’t have to plead to fulfil the final year of his contract. No, Hinkley will be coach and he has the total support of the club.

Character wins, which was witnessed on Friday night when Port beat the highly rated Hawks, was another reminder that Hinkley is a damned good coach who embodies everything that is Port Adelaide. Backs to the wall, never surrender and all that jazz.

In that sense, Hinkley is just like his predecessor Mark Williams.

Now, if he could only emulate “Choco” and deliver the Power a premiership.

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley exchanges words with Hawthorn players the semi-final win. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos

Secondly, AFL general counsel Stephen Meade won’t be invited to the club anytime soon.

Port is steaming with anger over the $20,000 fine to Hinkley for “conduct unbecoming” and if Port was not preparing for a preliminary final this weekend, the entire football club would’ve marched on AFL House with pitchforks and torches.

Port is filthy because they believe the AFL executive, including Meade, has unfairly targeted the club several times.

In this case, Port’s fury is justified.

The AFL’s penalty is an embarrassing overstep to an event that was embarrassing on many fronts, but hardly worthy of Meade’s heavy-handedness.

In fact, Port was expecting a cautionary tut-tut from headquarters and then a follow-up email warning them to start planning the festivities around a rematch at next year’s Gather Round.

That’s how the AFL thinks. It slaps you with one hand and then tickles you with the other.

Even when Port Adelaide president David Koch bumped into the AFL’s top brass – Andrew Dillon and Laura Kane – at Adelaide airport on Saturday morning, the strong impression Koch got was that the theatre of the night before was an unfortunate event, but one not to be too distressed about.

After all, isn’t sport just theatre with villains and victors? As long as no-one gets hurt.

The only thing that got hurt on Friday night was feelings, firstly James Sicily, then Sam Mitchell and not least the feelings of the posse of former Hawks gladiators – Luke Hodge, Jordan Lewis and Dermott Brereton. Once a competitor, always a competitor, and their reactions were part of the theatre, too. All of it was transfixing.

To then have Meade fine Hinkley $20,000 seemed utterly ridiculous to the crime – if it even was a crime.

Port Adelaide believes the Hinkley taunt is not even close to Jason McCartney’s physical confrontation and abuse of Sydney’s Tom Papley the week before, yet Hinkley copped the same $20k.

Port still believes Meade’s three-week suspension of Jeremy Finlayson for an homophobic slur towards an Essendon player was excessive when compared to North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson’s penalty – $20,000 and a two-week suspended ban – for homophobic slur to St Kilda’s Jimmy Webster. Both were homophobic slurs, but only one was suspended.

Also, Port is accepting of the $100,000 fine for breaching concussion management protocols around Aliir Aliir and Lachie Jones in 2023, but bemused how this year Geelong’s Jeremy Cameron stayed on the park, slightly dazed, after landing on his head in a marking contest.

Rightly or wrongly, Port feels terribly aggrieved about the Hinkley fine but, truth be known, the club is somewhat proud of itself for giving it back to the upstart and heavy-celebratory Hawks. It makes next year’s Gather Round – with Hinkley in charge – a marketer’s dream.

Just don’t count on an invitation from Port Adelaide, Mr Meade.

Originally published as Mark Robinson: Ken Hinkley will coach Port Adelaide in 2025 – and the club’s anger over fine is justified