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Hinkley’s patience wears thin

Jul 03, 2015
Port coach Ken Hinkley: we're not desperate enough to win.

Port coach Ken Hinkley: we're not desperate enough to win.

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley has hinted at changes to his team after questioning their level of desperation and demanding they man up in difficult circumstances.

The Power’s AFL finals hopes appear to be hanging by a thread following a 10-point away loss to Sydney on Thursday.

The defeat leaves them at least two wins outside the eight with nine rounds to go.

Hinkley still holds out some hope of a late season charge to the finals, but rued his team’s continuing inability to string together four good quarters in a game.

Port fell away badly in the decisive third quarter in which Sydney slammed on four straight goals to take control.

“Man up, that’s what we’ve got to do, man up a little bit at those times and just get the job done,” Hinkley said.

“At he moment we’re accepting the loss, not easily, but we’re delivering stuff out on the ground that would suggest that we’re just not desperate enough to win.”

MATCH REPORT: Gutsy Swans leave Port’s season teetering

Hinkley said he hadn’t lost belief in his playing group, but his patience with some of them is clearly starting to wear thin.

“We’ve been really strong and supportive of the group and we want to still have a lot of trust in them,” Hinkley said.

“But there’s some obvious things going on out there that you just say `there comes a time’…

“(There are) players who are not in good enough form to play AFL football at the moment, so we have to be prepared to look at that.

“I know they will bounce back, they will come back, but right now there’s some players who are just not playing well as they would like to, as we need them to.

“I’ve not lost belief in the group, but some of the boys in the team just haven’t got their form where it needs to be, so eventually there’s a price you pay.

“Broady (Matthew Broadbent) paid that price at some stage earlier in the year and there’s other players who (need to).

“You know what? I could ask them and they’d tell you themselves that they know they are not delivering the form they need to deliver to be an AFL player.”

Hinkley said he didn’t see the tackle by forward Jay Schulz on Sydney fullback Ted Richards, which resulted in the veteran fullback getting knocked out and forced out of the game.

Sydney coach John Longmire said Richards was fine after the game, but the incident is still likely to be looked at by the AFL.

“I got told in the rooms that the tackle compared to some tackles didn’t look super bad,” Hinkley said.

– AAP

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