Category: Sports

Surely, now would have been the ideal occasion for the two parties to shake hands and accept that one decade had seen Hinkley lift Port Adelaide out of the mire back to respectability despite having failed to help deliver the ultimate.

Particularly when Koch chose this week to again publicly threaten Hinkley’s job and his off-field football team, in a clumsy attempt to appease his supporter base which appears to have increasingly turned on Hinkley from the start of the season.

No one is suggesting Koch has no right to criticize his team’s performance. Port might have lost seven games for less than two goals this season, but the side has under-delivered in what could prove the team’s worst finish under Hinkley. But to suggest Hinkley and his team he must turn things around in a fortnight or else came over as a hollow threat.

Just as the club backflipped after one season on Hinkley’s dual captaincy strategy due to supporter backlash, the coach has been undermined again to satisfy one of the most demanding fan bases in football. This was not a show of strength by Koch and, in fact, by the end of the week his resolve looked positively flimsy.

Hinkley took a pay cut when his contract was extended for two years at the start of 2021 and as a result refused to entertain the prospect of any performance clauses. The club cannot afford to pay him out, and he has a watertight deal until the end of next season.

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Koch backtracked on Thursday but still pointed out that Hinkley had failed to coach Port to a grand finale. Back in early 2016 when Richmond backed Damien Hardwick with a contract extension, president Peggy O’Neal’s blunt assessment was that the club looked around and saw no one better than the incumbent, and when the Tigers’ season capitulated her firm decision to back Hardwick has become a template for situations like Port’s current predicament.

What is surprising is that no club has put out the feelers for Hinkley in recent days despite his winning record. North Melbourne have thrown their entire weight behind Alastair Clarkson and will look no further unless that bid fails, while GWS have stuck to a process in which Clarkson remains their preferred target. The Giants have said they will not approach a contracted coach, but surely Koch’s comments on Monday opened the door.

So, barring a late play, Hinkley stays at Port with the most likely movement at Alberton to see assistant coach Brett Montgomery replaced. Football boss Davies has refused to entertain offers, including one from North, and has maintained his faith in Hinkley and their program.

But this is not the ideal starting point upon which to build season 2023. An uneasy president, a coach under pressure to deliver from round one or else suffer the ignominy of the weekly sacking debate, and a playing group and football department that knows it.

In another country, in a different football competition, Ken Hinkley would be seen as a winning coach. In Australia and in the town of Adelaide he is a coach under pressure. Nothing will change in that department unless he can deliver a top-four finish next season.

No disrespect to Dew or the superb Port team which had the misfortune to come up against one-last-shot champion Richmond in the preliminary final of 2020, but perhaps Hinkley should have walked away at the end of 2017 and coached the Suns.

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The victorious team included Greg Chappell, Rod Marsh, Dennis Lillee and David Hookes. They, and others, would next represent Packer’s WSC Australia at the old VFL Park in Melbourne in December that year.

Kitto wanted approval from the bank under then-existing federal regulations to move money out of Australia. In a formal letter on March 28, he said the aim was to pay “talent” overseas, but he divulged nothing about what the talent would do.

“One of its functions is to engage the services of persons who are resident abroad and who have talents capable of exploitation in Australia and elsewhere. Our interest in those activities lies in arrangements for coverage for television programming,” he wrote.

“It is not possible to say with whom the contracts are likely to be made or on what terms of conditions.”

The only indication where the money might head was a reference to the West Indies.

The suspicions of the RBA about the proposal were immediately aroused.

In a diary note written the day after Kitto’s letter, senior Reserve Bank staff expressed concern about the lack of information about the entire endeavor. Kitto, it was noted, was “most vague” about the proposal.

“He was unable (or felt unable) to give any details of the sort of contracts these people were to enter into or to give any indication of how much in total might be involved,” the note recorded.

“What Mr Kitto was asking was virtually an authority against a blank check and that his letter was inadequate.”

A phone call that day from Kitto shed a little more light on the situation. He revealed “with some reluctance” that his company was drafting three-year contracts for “persons yet to be named” to “perform sporting or other activities to be specified on a specific number of days or parts of a year”.

The “performers” would be restricted from taking actions that may be “contrary to the interests of Channel Nine.”

The only inkling that the request was cricket-related was that up to 12 people – the number of a full team – were to be signed.

“Performers would be paid a signing-on fee at the time the contracts were negotiated overseas; and two other lump sum payments for performances while under contract and at the end of the contract period,” the note recorded.

So anxious was Kitto about the issue, that a person was sent to the RBA building in central Sydney to wait on the bank’s final decision.

Bank staff agreed to the request but in return they wanted to see the contracts signed by the various “talents”.

On April 15 – more than three weeks before news of Packer’s cricket revolution broke – the Reserve Bank received a letter saying two people had signed to provide “personal services”.

They were Anderson Roberts, better known as Andy Roberts, and Vivian Richards. Roberts took 202 Test wickets and is an ICC Cricket Hall of Fame inductee. Richards, now Sir Vivian, was named one of Wisden‘s five cricketers of the century.

Three days later, a contract for fast bowler Michael Holding was received. More would soon follow, including those signed by greats such as Zaheer Abbas, Joel Garner, Imran Khan and Alvin Kallicharran.

In many cases, the witness to the contracts was England’s Test captain Tony Greig.

Copies of the contracts held by the RBA show what Packer expected of his team members.

Players had to be available 15 minutes prior to the start, at all times “play to the best of his ability and skill” and ensure they were “physically fit at all times”.

The reputation of the teams, which came under fire from old-school cricketing greats and parts of the media as “pirates” for taking high-paid positions with Packer, was also of paramount importance.

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“At all times so conduct himself as to enhance the business and the reputation of The Promoter in promoting professional cricket in Australia and elsewhere and will not do or omit to do anything whereby the good name and reputation of the Promoter or any of its employees or of himself or of any other player taking part in a Tour will or may be likely to be brought into disrepute or ridicule,” the contracts noted.

Not only was the RBA required to facilitate the players’ pay, it was also helped pay for the promotional activities undertaken to highlight the new competition.

On July 18, the bank was contacted saying JP Sport needed to remit money to pay for filming activities in England for a program tentatively called Cricket Circus.

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“The company’s management also deems it desirable to obtain, whilst a representative is overseas, action film footage of the West Indian professional cricketers,” it was noted.

All of the documents, which until now have been held in the RBA’s vast archives, are virtually untouched. Only the exact payment to each player has been kept secret on privacy grounds.

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