PORT ADELAIDE coach Ken Hinkley says he’s “wounded” after his side’s disappointing end to the season but looks forward to the challenge of coming back harder and better next season.
The Power fell by 22 points to Essendon on Friday night, putting an end to its slim finals hopes and a full stop to its season.
Hinkley’s side looked set to finish inside the top four but lost its last four matches and six of its last seven to slide to ninth.
“Can you be more disappointed? I doubt that you could,” Hinkley said after the game at the Adelaide Oval.
“This footy club has let everyone down.
“Us as a football department have let the football club down, we’ll understand that and we’ll look at it very very closely and we’ll make the decisions that have to be made.”
The Power started poorly against the Bombers and trailed by 33 points at the first change.
It mounted two comebacks, closing to within nine points in the second term and 17 points in the last but failed the Bombers continually had all the answers.
“Tonight was somewhat of a flip of our season wasn’t it,” Hinkley said.
“We started really poorly, got going to fight back a bit but just didn’t give ourselves a chance to win.
“I just don’t think we were up early for the speed of Essendon.
“Their willingness to get hard forward… but if I give (my players) anything at least they grunt it out because it could have been a lot worse.”
Hinkley was firm in what cost his side in the first quarter, suggesting it was the same issue that had plagued it in the last two months of the season.
“It’s really clear that when we play good footy, we compete contest-wise and we hunt,” he said.
“When we play really poor footy, we drop off in those areas.
“We got our hunt, we got our contest going. Without that Port Adelaide’s DNA is nothing, that’s what we are, a contest and hunt team and we haven’t been that.
“If you look at the last six week’s that’s what’s been broken, we’re broken in that space.”
Despite the loss, Hinkley praised the work of 21-year-old Billy Frampton (17 disposals, 5 marks, 15 hit-outs and a goal) in his AFL debut
The Power coach has been the subject of intense criticism in recent weeks and he said he deserved it.
He said a thorough review would be completed to determine what went wrong and how it can be fixed.
“The what and the why will come,
“Was it
“If it’s game style I’ll own it. I don’t mind the criticism, we deserve criticism when we performed like we did in the last six weeks.
“I’m not going to avoid it, I look forward to it, it’ll make me better.”
The Power lost five games since the bye by less than ten points and lost its last four games at the Adelaide Oval, traditionally a fortress for the home side.
Hinkley said the disappointing finish to the season hurt and would drive an improvement in standards for next season.
“It’s as wounded as I’ve felt, I reckon in my time in footy. Wounded – I’m not dead and I won’t be,” he said.
“We’ve copped one as a team, we’re in this together but gee I look forward to it, I won’t go down easy.
“We’ll be a harder club, we’ll train strongly through the summer, we’ll demand standards that are at the elite level, which we do more often than not, but we’ll push harder.
“We haven’t pushed hard enough because we haven’t got to where we want to go, so we have to push harder.”
