Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley urged his players to enjoy their record-breaking smackdown of ladder leaders Sydney knowing that the Power squad is healthy and in control of its own destiny at the pointy end of the season.
The surging Power picked up nearly seven precious percentage points from Saturday night’s remarkable 112-point demolition of the Swans, which launched Hinkley’s side up the ladder and took it a step closer to securing a top-four finish.
“The comp is so hard that you’ve got to enjoy it,” Hinkley said.
Watch every game of every round this Toyota AFL Premiership Season LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial today >
Port shock Swans in 112 point belting | 00:51
“You don’t get many games like that, clearly.
“There’s not a player on our team that didn’t play a significant part in that victory, you have to have that win games as big as that, so they should enjoy it.
“But I think they’re pretty determined with what they’re trying to achieve, and I hope that they can keep their noses down and eyes on the contest and see what happens from here.
“It’s hard to keep it at the level that we have been at in the last six quarters, but hopefully we can and if we can, that will give us a great opportunity.
“The comp says ‘Lose one and you’re out of the eight’ … that’s how it feels, but importantly we pick up a bit of percentage, which could also be pretty important in the run home.
“We can control where we finish by finishing the way that we want to finish.
“We are healthy at the moment and that certainly helps.
“We’re much healthier this year than we were this time last year.”
Longmire critical of Swans lack of fight | 08:23
Mitch Georgiades and Willie Rioli each bagged four goals in a forward line that had 12 goalkickers in the astonishing drubbing that saw the Power put 71 points on the board before Sydney scored at all.
Defender Esava Ratugolea was inaccurate but lively in his second match redeployed as a forward, leaving Hinkley with an interesting selection decision to make with Todd Marshall set to return from injury.
“One goal, four (behinds) would suggest he does need to go back, doesn’t it?” Hinkley replied with a wry grin when asked for his thoughts on the Ratugolea experiment.
“No, I think he’s playing really well in that area of the ground … we’ve had Todd out, so we’ve had to explore that a little bit.
“Good on him for welcoming that opportunity because he did come with his mind set on playing back, but we knew he could play forward.
“Hopefully, he allows us to be flexible.”
Pies give Pendlebury night to remember | 02:46
With three games left in the home-and-away season, Port are one of the form teams of the competition, having won five of its past six games after being booed off Adelaide Oval following a heavy Round 16 to the Brisbane Lions.
“There’s no point going back, the game’s too hard, you just stay in the moment,” Hinkley replied when asked to reflect on that dark day.
“We’ll enjoy the victory.
“Everyone wants us to be winning every week, I get it, but every team has had a night like Sydney had.
“Every team has had that night this year.
“We had that against Brisbane six weeks ago, it doesn’t mean we can’t have that again and we hope that we never do, but we just had a really, really bad day.
“You can’t look at that game and go; ‘That’s who we are’ because we’ve been much better than that.
“We’ve been really consistent, but we had a bad night.”
Source Agencies
