All power to Hinkley, an overlooked gem

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley. Picture: Sarah Reed Source: The Advertiser

IN an ever-growing AFL world of corporate governance, Ken Hinkley was something of an anachronism, blessed with footy smarts but lacking the polish necessary when presenting before new-aged coaching sub-committees.

And so the half-back flanker with a natural attacking mindset was consistently overlooked for roles to the point where it seemed his dream may have vanished.

But with Hinkley, who played 121 games with Geelong between 1989 and 1995, there was always the fact he could coach. His record after he went back to his roots to begin coaching says so.

Hinkley returned to the Hampden league, moving from Mortlake to his hometown of Camperdown before his coaching odyssey took him to Melbourne, Geelong, Gold Coast and now Adelaide.

Hinkley came close, very close, to being appointed at clubs such as Richmond, Geelong and St Kilda, while watching Melbourne appoint his former teammate in Mark Neeld and seeing fellow Geelong assistants Brenton Sanderson and Brendan McCartney get senior coaching jobs at Adelaide and the Western Bulldogs.

It had to have hurt because Hinkley is said to combine a strong self-belief with high competitive levels: "I dropped him to the seconds once where he dominated and remember asking him how he liked the game. He just said I never want to play in the seconds again, and he didn't," Blight said.

"Would I have said he was one of the Geelong players likely to coach? Probably not at that time."

Paul Couch, a teammate of Hinkley for seven seasons at Geelong, said it took a while before he realised Hinkley had the coaching smarts. "As a player I found him reasonably uncommunicative and looked at blokes like Liam Pickering and 'Hock' (Steven Hocking) as the budding coaches," Couch said.

"But I happened to be at two Grand Finals where Kenny was coaching, Camperdown in the late 1990s and Bell Park in Geelong a few years later.

"Both times, he seemed to be in total control on the day, making the right moves. He won them those games."

Geelong premiership captain Cameron Ling never doubted Hinkley's ability to coach in the AFL but was worried it wouldn't happen.

"When 'Bomber' (Mark Thompson) left Geelong, I was barracking for Kenny and 'Sando' (Sanderson) to get the job and of course as it turned out Brian Cook and company made the right decision in Chris Scott," Ling said. "During my time, Ken was really good at getting the most out of a few of those players who could be slightly high maintenance.

"Plus, he saw the game really well and was ahead of the trends.

"He will be successful at Port just as long as he gets time. He will encourage his players to take some risks but because they are young there will be mistakes, so they have to have patience."

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