Ken Hinkley, right, with Peter Jonas and Malcolm Blight at St Kilda back in 2000. Picture: Craig Borrow Source: Herald Sun
KEN Hinkley finished his playing career under Gary Ayres, the durable and rock-hard Hawthorn champion, and made a note of how much coaches are a product of their playing environment.
Ayres was big on discipline, unafraid to give a mighty bake and unflinching when it came to team rules.
He had lived by those standards as a player - under coaches such as Parkin, Allan Jeans and Alan Joyce - as he collected four premierships alongside ferocious teammates such as Don Scott, Leigh Matthews and Dermott Brereton.
He coached the Hawthorn way.
But nobody spent as much time shaping Hinkley as Malcolm Blight, who had him as a player at Geelong, as an assistant coach at St Kilda and was a director when Hinkley took a post as an assistant at the Gold Coast.
It showed in the way Hinkley played. He was a half-back flanker before his time, one who intercepted, ran off and created - an attacking mindset he maintained after spending the first part of his career as a forward.
He had been a skinny kid at half-forward, football's starvation corner, before Blight thought to try something different in 1990.
Blight had sensed there was much untapped talent in Hinkley, but hadn't had any success in teasing it out until he threw him back in a reserves game. Hinkley played one of those games where he seemed to be everywhere and chalked up an audacious amount of disposals.
Mightily impressed, Blight pulled him aside afterwards and asked him what he had learnt.
Hinkley: "I learned that I don't want to play in the twos". Blight liked that.
Hinkley recognises the influence Blight had over his career, and speaks fondly of the times down at Sleepy Hollow.
The positional shift was a key moment in his career.
"That was a big thing," Hinkley said. "I was a small half-forward with not a very big build and it was a pretty tough position to play, to get a kick.
"Unless you were a super player you were up and down which meant you found yourself in and out of the side a fair bit.
"The shift to half-back ... it did seem to click for me.
"Blight put me there as a player and gave me confidence and it led to a reasonable career."
I enjoy coaching. It's probably more of a passion to me than playing
But as difficult as the early days were, Blight believes they have now become one of Hinkley's greatest strengths.
When Port signed Hinkley, Blight was the first to applaud the decision.
"Having the setbacks early - he's a real players' man," Blight said. "But he is a strong character.
"He loves the players but he's got a gear - it must be done right.
"He's actually an engaging character with a great sense of humour. First and foremost he makes no apologies for being very much a family man."
Blight was lured out of retirement to coach St Kilda in 2001 on one of football's most lucrative coaching salaries - the figures bandied around at the time suggested he was on $1 million a season.
But it crashed, and his assistant Hinkley found himself back in the bush.
"I was given a great opportunity," Hinkley recalled.
"I had had some success back home at Camperdown and I was looking for an opportunity to do something else in coaching.
"Because I enjoy coaching. It's probably more of a passion to me than playing.
"I found out that that's what I wanted to do.
"And when that (St Kilda) didn't work out I went back and coached in the Geelong Football League."
BACK TO GEELONG
HINKLEY returned to Kardinia Park a more grounded man, devoted to his family and clear about his direction in the game.
Similarly, the team under coach Mark "Bomber" Thompson was becoming a settled side, about to embark on one of the modern game's most successful stints.
The rest of the competition marvelled at Geelong's aesthetic and effective brand of football. It was as though they felt compelled to play, as the club song goes, the game as it should be played.
But Hinkley said there was more to Geelong than flair, and the cornerstones of Thompson's success came through years of laying a foundation of watertight defence and being fierce in the contested ball department.
"It didn't come about overnight," Hinkley said.
"The Geelong game had fundamentals of defend hard and win the contested ball.
"As a club they became a very attacking side because of those things.
"Some people get mixed up with what it actually was that made them a great side."
It was an insight for Hinkley, who was used to Blight's devil-may-care approach, and made him concentrate on a different side of the game.
"It was something I still wanted to do. I knew it was more cut-throat at this level.
"Spending time with Bomber, I started understanding the defensive side of the game and value that a lot more than I did as a player, and I think that probably rounded me off as a coach."
THE ROAD AHEAD
AT Port Adelaide, Hinkley is contemplating what's ahead as he plots the season in his office at Alberton.
Concerns? There are a few.
Towards the end of last year, Hinkley saw a side that looked low in confidence, burdened by the accumulative losses.
He knows all about them, having been in three losing grand finals before he retired at the end of 2005.
Hinkley puts it well. It can be the best day of your life and the worst day of your life.
It begs the question: Is it possible that Port Adelaide was scarred from the 2007 Grand Final against Geelong, the massive blowout Hinkley helped engineer, for the ensuing years?
"It's no fun losing grand finals," he said. "You can have pretty bad letdowns. It can be a disaster for you.
"But you just have to move on quickly, and most footballers do.
"That one, it was such a large loss. It's a tough one to answer for anyone."
To Hinkley, being part of winning pennants as a coach has closed the wounds.
He tasted success with both Camperdown in the Hampden league in Western Victoria as playing coach and non-playing, and with Bell Park in the Geelong league as non-playing.
Then, of course, came the golden era with Geelong in the AFL.
"Having been involved with sides that have won premierships now, you understand that it would have been great, as a player.
"But it's part of the journey. It wasn't for a lack of trying; we just weren't good enough at the time.
"I would have loved to have one as a player but I've been lucky in footy; I've had a lot of success."
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