It’s not just about Ken Hinkley anymore. It hasn’t been for a while.
This is about leadership, or more accurately the complete and utter lack of it, at every level of the Port Adelaide Football Club.
Ken has run his race. That much is obvious. Twelve years. Zero Grand Finals. The same patterns repeated, the same excuses made (and added to). The man who once brought hope back to Alberton has now become the anchor weighing it down. But what’s worse, far worse, is the fact that no one at this football club seems willing to stand up and say it out loud.
Now, in any successful organisation, there’s usually a simple formula at play: everyone knows their role, does their job, and trusts those around them to do theirs. That kind of clarity and trust is powerful. It’s how high-performing teams thrive.
But that only works when the team are delivering success, or at least showing growth towards success.
When they’re not, when standards slip, results stall, and direction is lost, there comes a time when leaders have to lead. That means speaking up. That means asking the hard questions. That means taking responsibility. That means making the tough calls.
Right now, no one at Port Adelaide is doing that.
The AFL blames the board, the board blames the football committee, the football committee and the coach blame the players (or lack thereof). There is a leadership void. It is structural. It is built into the rewritten constitution of the Port Adelaide Football Club. And some might suggest deliberately so as to keep the club small, to keep the club controllable, to ensure that the KPIs of the AFL (not the club) are prioritised.
Most of Port Adelaide’s board is appointed by the AFL. Think about that for a moment. The governing body of the competition, whose interests are and should be the game as a whole, especially the commercial aspect, gets to choose who makes critical decisions about the culture, direction, and accountability of our football club. How can a board that owes its position to the AFL be expected to act in the best interests of Port Adelaide when those interests might clash with the AFL’s own?
This structural flaw isn’t a bug, it’s the feature. It’s the reason mediocrity is tolerated. It’s the reason we’re stuck with a coach whose long lost his way. It’s the reason the football department is a rudderless ship, drifting in circles while the competition sails past us.
There is no leadership. No vision. No-one willing to take the risk, to take responsibility, to act in the interests of the club and its people, not the interests of their ego, their pay packet, their position, or their political standing. Even those who do show such traits have been strategically positioned so that they are one voice amongst many, not able to state their position publicly, and not enough to outvote those without a spine.
But here’s the truth: Every single one of them, from the players to the coach, to the committee, to the board, and finally, to the AFL, has an opportunity. An opportunity to grow a spine. An opportunity to show what leadership actually looks like. An opportunity to stop deferring, stop pointing fingers up the chain, and say: “Enough is enough.”
Leadership means accountability. It means doing the hard thing when it’s right, not the easy thing when it’s comfortable. It means making tough calls, especially when those calls are about people you respect, people you’ve worked with, even people you like. It means putting the club first.
We are not a club that exists to make up numbers. We are not a club that accepts failure as long as it’s profitable. We are Port Adelaide. We exist to win premierships. To demand the highest standards from ourselves and each other. To live The Creed. To never give in.
So this is a call, no, a demand, to every person with a voice, a vote, or a vest at Alberton: Connor Rozee, Josh Carr, ex players and administrators, the football committee, the board, hell even the AFL. Show leadership. Be accountable. Speak up. Stand up.
And if you can’t (or won’t) then you’re part of the problem. And someone needs to stand up and say that, too.
Because ultimately, the buck stops with the AFL. And the longer they allow this to go on, the clearer it becomes that their vision for Port Adelaide is not one of power and premierships, but passivity and profits.
The custodians are not the club. Those of us who remember who we are need to keep demanding better. For our club. For our past. For our future.
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