Hard for Hinkley, Port to shake chokers tag
KEN Hinkley said it wasn’t the right time to judge Port Adelaide’s 2021 season, following a second straight exit at the preliminary final stage.
But Port fans will be wondering just what progress their side has made this season as the uncomfortable question starts to be asked by the Power faithful, “Have we actually gone backwards this year?”
Especially when Hinkley again reiterated prior to Saturday night’s game that fans, critics, pundits etc should “wait and judge us when we can get all our people that we need on the team playing well together, give us some continuity back together and we can play at a high level”.
While he was reluctant to reflect on the 2021 campaign after the 71-point thrashing at the hands of the Western Bulldogs, the biggest finals loss for Port since the 2007 grand final, Hinkley did say for his side to be one of the final four teams remaining was “a bloody good effort”.
And he was right, to make a second-straight preliminary final after they failed to make the top eight for two seasons after their 2014 effort was indeed a bloody good effort from the Power.
After the casualty ward was sparsely populated in 2020, the Power copped a mammoth load of injuries to key players.
They copped it nearly all year that they were the flattrack bullies of the AFL as they struggled to lay a glove on a top-four side.
But once the injury list dwindled and the key players came back the Power seemed to have timed their run perfectly.
They looked to have buried the flat-track bully tag when they knocked off the Bulldogs in the final game of the home
and-away season, and then they blew Geelong out of the water in the qualifying final.
The team that had been probably the fifth best team for the majority of the season was in the final four.
Aliir Aliir, who was poor with the ball by foot as the Bulldogs’ plan of using Josh Schache to blunt his impact paid off in spades, was the recruit of the year prior to Saturday night.
Willem Drew has made a midfield spot his own for the Power, Karl Amon had a career-best year with more time on the inside and Miles Bergman played 23 games (two as an unused sub) as he finally broke into the side.
Ollie Wines may yet become the Power’s first ever Brownlow Medal winner on Sunday, after he emerged as a genuine star of the competition.
But a 71-point loss at home in a preliminary final, a game the Power weren’t in from the first minute, means the positives from this campaign are quickly forgotten.
The two phrases that are now being associated with the Power’s 2021 campaign in the aftermath of that demolition job by the Bulldogs is “blew it” and “choked”.
And it will be pretty damn hard for the Power to shake those tags.