Ken Hinkley unwittingly left Channel 7 commentators in a fit of laughter with a sentence of repetitive coach-speak after accepting Port Adelaide are not in the lead group of AFL premiership contenders.
Thursday night’s defeat to Carlton was their third at Adelaide Oval this season — something that did not happen last year until late July — and they now have only five home games left to bolster their current 8-4 record.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Ken Hinkley’s comment leaves Channel 7 panel in fit of laughter.
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At this point in 2023, Port were comfortably in the top two and in the middle of a 13-game winning streak with seven home games still to come in their campaign.
But they will now have to prove their flag credentials away to the GWS Giants, St Kilda, Gold Coast, Carlton, Melbourne and Fremantle with home games — including one against ladder leaders Sydney — dotted between each of those matches.
Hinkley raised his perspective on their status when he diverted from celebrating Mitch Georgiades’ four-goal game to declaring “we need a few others to help him”.
“Not enough sharing the load at times. Look, we’ve played… let’s not get… we’re 8-4, we’ve played pretty well to this point,” the coach said.
“We’re accurately where we are, I think. We’re in that mid-tier, that big group of teams that’s fighting. There’s clearly one side that’s standing out, the rest are still trying to sort it out.
“On tonight’s game, we’ve got a lot more to do and a lot more to sort out … we know we’ve got a lot of room to improve. We go to the bye at 8-4, going that’s a pretty fair reflection, I would say.”
Hinkley then managed to squeeze the word ‘learn’ into a single answer four times, seemingly aware he was playing up the cliche after declining to go “into actual detail” on what he wants to fix.
“Every time you lose you get a chance to learn, every time you win you get a chance to learn — it’s just how much learning you need and tonight you would say we need a fair bit of learning,” Hinkley said, drawing laughs from the 7AFL panel.
“Thank you to Ken Hinkley… I’ve got the giggles!” Abbey Holmes said, battling to keep speaking.
Dale Thomas jumped on the coach-speak: “Lots of learnings to come, it sounds like Abs, because you win, you can learn, you lose, you learn.”
“But I love the honesty in the fact that he said we are where we know we are, which is in that chasing pack with Sydney the clear one that’s at the front,” he added.
Thomas said the run of away games will give “a true indication” of where Port Adelaide are this season.
“There is no home-ground advantage,” he said.
“I don’t mind that. You want to be going in (to the finals) on genuine form.”
Hinkley had dived deeper into his vocabulary to declare Port were “spanked” by Carlton in a final quarter led by their star skipper Patrick Cripps.
And it gave him the opportunity to send out a reminder, if not a challenge, to his own midfielders to step up on the defensive side of the ball.
“Cripps is smart enough and clever enough to go forward and hit the scoreboard,” Hinkley said.
“We’re talking about a pretty good player, a Brownlow medallist, and sometimes they are hard to stop.
“But our players know that and they just need to take some responsibility in those moments to control their (Carlton’s) weapons, which they have got a few.”