That rod, in my eyes, took away the Ken Hinkley superpower that has made his teams so special to watch.
I remember that 2014 Port team that took the league by storm because they ran.
They were like Coach Carter’s Richmond High School team and the rest of the league couldn’t keep up.
They overwhelmed teams with their running power, and had enough skill in the front half with guys like Robbie Gray and Chad Wingard to guarantee themselves some end product.
That running power, inspired by Ken, was almost enough for them to topple the Hawthorn dynasty before it began in the Preliminary Final.
That game was their season. They ran and ran to the end of the game while Hawthorn just stopped.
The 2014 Power had deeper reserves of will than anyone since Phar Lap.
They just missed their chances at the end.
But that became what Port under Hinkley have been for over a decade.
His teams have always had will significantly outstrip skill.
It’s the old fighter versus athlete dichotomy that’s dominating modern fight sports.
People like Cyril Gane or Daniel Dubois are extraordinary athletes who lack the will of the less gifted but more willing legends who came before them.
Whereas a guy like Arturo Gatti was a fraction of the level of athlete that those guys are, but had more willpower than the two of them combined.
Effort was his superpower.
The Hinkley superpower is coaching that effort.
But the way he has done it is always by positioning himself and his team against everyone.
The Kenny anthem has to be “me against the world”.
And Ken often didn’t have to look too far
David Koch is the AFL’s Jerry Jones, the administrator that loves the spotlight.
It didn’t matter that Hinkley has never had a season with fewer than 10 wins. Kochie’s always been there to publicly litigate his job.
I imagine every offseason conversation was like when Billy Beane went to speak to the owner in Moneyball, except Ken isn’t asking for more money, he’s asking for Kochie to shut up.
Only for Kochie to say “we’re not going to compete with the teams who don’t want their president to be the most famous identity on the team.”
That kind of uncertainty, that precariousness, and the combativeness that comes with it has always been part of Ken’s magic.
He’s built a cult of personality around himself and his boys.
He’s always been able to tell his players: “They want us to fail so they can break us up.”
And his teams bought in.
He’s always built on that combativeness publicly as well, reacting to whatever is in the ether.
He never left any doubt that he and his boys were one.
Remember the Ginnivan plane comment and Ken’s reaction?
Or when he pulled out “5-0 hands” after a bad run of Showdowns in 2018?
What about when he jumped for joy after beating Melbourne to win seven in a row in 2023, while Koch and the brass wouldn’t extend him?
He always knew what people were saying about him both internally and externally and weaponised it publicly and privately.
He can say it’s all about what’s inside the four walls all he wants, but blind Freddie can see Ken’s rabbit ears.
They’re what made him great.
His teams always took it personally.
They always played like it could all fall apart without maximum effort and they turned that into fuel.
Which brings me back to the rod Port made for Ken’s back at the start of this year.
They made a coach who thrived on adversity and uncertainty, certain.
This would be the last year of Ken. Suddenly they weren’t doing anything to us.
Instead, it became we are doing it all together.
That, to me, is the biggest reason for their drop off this season.
This isn’t a markedly worse or different list than the last four years where they’ve won at least 16 games three out of four times.
They’re the same kind of rag tag bunch with a few stars dotted around the place mostly in the midfield that Ken turned into a perennial top-4 team.
They just don’t have the precariousness that Ken could weaponise.
You did this! It’s your fault!
But that’s a story for another day.
Today, the story is how much I enjoyed Ken and his teams even without them ever winning the ultimate prize.