Even the team Hinkley taunted offered him a job. But he was born to coach

March 28, 2026 — 5:30am

Three AFL clubs came knocking for Ken Hinkley towards the end of 2025 after his disappointing farewell season at Port Adelaide. Four, if you count Tasmania.

Most surprisingly for him given his controversial 2024 semi-final run in with Jack Ginnivan, Sam Mitchell explored a mentoring role for him in Hawthorn’s football department. The most serious offer came from Essendon via club director-turned-defensive coach Dean Solomon who wanted Hinkley to take over as director of coaching. Solomon had been a long-time admirer of Hinkley stemming from the formative years of the Gold Coast Suns.

Reigning premiers Brisbane spent the first half of October fearing football boss Danny Daly would move to the Suns. The Lions hierarchy wanted to go through a formal search process to replace Daly should he leave, but coach Chris Fagan was adamant he wanted Hinkley. That power struggle never eventuated because Daly ultimately rejected the Gold Coast approach.

At Tasmania, the coaching job is Nathan Buckley’s to lose. But CEO Brendon Gale sought the benefit of Hinkley’s wisdom from his Gold Coast experience, with the latter advising Gale that fledgling AFL clubs required experienced coaches. Gale has also sounded out Hinkley’s former colleagues regarding the prospect of him taking over the head of football role.

Buckley is not over the line, but he has had lengthy discussions with Gale, has already undergone psychological testing for the role and pulled out of the running for the Melbourne coaching job with one eye on a future coaching the Devils.

Geelong kept Gale in the loop when it offered Buckley a coaching role this season. And yet with coaches like John Longmire and Hinkley currently out of the game, the Devils’ board still has not reached a final decision.

Because in the end, Ken Hinkley is a coach. Those close to him say he has concluded as much in the early stages of his first year away from the job in three decades since he took over at Mortlake in 1996, retiring as a player following Geelong’s grand final loss to Carlton the previous year.

It is true that Hinkley has entertained the prospect of a management role in football away from coaching. He knocked back the Essendon job in part because his wife, Donna, and the wider family are now fully settled in Adelaide and his media commentary roles with SEN and Fox Footy enabled that, along with a desire to spend at least a year away from an AFL club.

During COVID Hinkley took a significant pay cut like many coaches, and Port Adelaide repaid that sacrifice with a $400,000 settlement heading into 2026, making his decision more financially palatable.

Even senior Port Adelaide directors and executives have been taken aback at the manner in which Hinkley has burst onto the AFL media landscape. His brutal assessment of Essendon in its loss to his old club was memorable and sharp. His supporters would say that is because he always kept his best work behind closed doors with his players.

Those relationships remained his one wood over 13 years at Alberton where, as he ruefully reflected in his farewell interview, he became the longest serving coach in the game not to have reached a grand final. His 58-plus per cent winning record is the best for any long-serving VFL/AFL coach not to have reached the ultimate play-off – despite reaching four preliminary finals with Port and losing two by a kick.

The coaching journey has taken Hinkley, who turns 60 shortly after this year’s grand final, to Camperdown, St Kilda under Malcolm Blight, to Bell Park in the Geelong Football League before returning to Geelong where he played a key role under Mark Thompson at the start of the Cats’ dynasty. Hinkley left the Cats for another assistant’s role under Guy McKenna at the Gold Coast.

History would suggest the Suns’ difficult first decade could have been different had Hinkley replaced McKenna. During his time there he missed senior roles at Richmond, St Kilda and – most disappointingly for him – Geelong. So disillusioned was Hinkley regarding his senior prospects that it took three attempts for Port’s then boss, Keith Thomas, to interview him for the Power role.

In 2017, Gold Coast chief Mark Evans did pursue Hinkley after the Rodney Eade sacking. It had been a tumultuous end to Port’s season after an extra-time finals loss to West Coast. In the aftermath of that game chairman David Koch incurred the wrath of the coaches and players – Charlie Dixon was visibly angry – for a post-game address to the shattered team. The subsequent meeting at Hinkley’s home with Port bosses, which saw the coach ultimately reject the Suns and reach a new deal, has gone down in Port Adelaide folklore given the verbal spray Donna Hinkley delivered to Koch.

Hinkley, despite a tense relationship with Koch, was never happier at Port than when surrounded by former chief Thomas, football boss Chris Davies and long-time list manager Jason Cripps.

Close observers say that although he never fell out with current Port chief Matthew Richardson, the job for Hinkley was less enjoyable and harmonious after the club let Thomas go at the end of 2020.

In 2024, the season leading up to the formal announcement of the Josh Carr handover, Hinkley coached the club to third in the knowledge that the Carr succession had already been reached on a handshake.

Hinkley did not like being told at the time but would probably concede now that that season was too often punctuated by public displays of emotion. Heavily booed by Port supporters during a thrashing at the hands of Brisbane, he came close to tears the following week after narrowly beating St Kilda.

Premiership captain Warren Tredrea had come onto the club’s board, having a year earlier described Hinkley’s position as “untenable”, and while on the board was accused of publicly fuelling speculation about his role by appearing to agree with a radio caller’s criticism of Hinkley. Tredrea later denied he was endorsing the caller’s comment. The AFL had on more than one occasion warned Hinkley about his sideline behaviour during games.

It is an indication of his popularity and how much the football community admired him that Andrew Dillon and his team badly damaged its image when Hinkley was fined $20,000 for the Ginnivan taunt after the Port-Hawthorn semi-final. (The club paid the fine for him.) And that Sam Mitchell, after publicly condemning Hinkley, spoke to Hinkley the following year about bringing him into his inner sanctum.

Hinkley burst onto the senior AFL coaching scene, just as he has into the media. He took the so-called “carcass on the AFL landscape” Port to fifth in his first season and oversaw the creation of a culture over more than a decade underscored by player retention. Little wonder four clubs sounded him out to bring that unique instinct for creating a community within a club to their own programs.

Hinkley toyed seriously with taking on a head of football or director of coaching role in his next life before ultimately concluding that he is a coach. And Fagan has proven that turning 60 is no impediment to the most demanding role in football.

Moving the Hinkley clan from Adelaide will be some assignment, but the patriarch’s passion for the job would indicate that even a less stressful and rewarding role in the media, and days off with his beloved greyhounds, will not override that burning desire.

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