Hinkley confirms verbal Port rollicking in China

Ken Hinkley has explained why he gave his Port Adelaide coaching staff a verbal rollicking back in 2017.

Former Power assistant Chad Cornes revealed earlier this week that he and his fellow coaches were on the receiving end of a decent tirade from Hinkley in China.

It happened after a night out in Shanghai involving Michael Voss and other Port assistants.

The Power were due to play Gold Coast on the weekend and luckily for those involved the night out didn’t impact the result.

“It sounds like I’m an alcoholic here! The first trip to China, Vossy took us out on a Wednesday night as we had the Thursday off,” Cornes said on SEN SA’s The Run Home.

“As things often do when you’re with ex footy players, the night just took us in a direction it wasn’t meant to.

“We were playing on the Saturday and went out on Wednesday. It was outrageous. You have a couple of double Jack Daniel’s and…

“Kenny found out the next day but he sort of let it go until we got back. ‘If any of you ever do anything like that at this football club I will (insert expletive) sack ya!’.

“Kenny is brutal. When he goes it’s scary. We won the game, thankfully.”

Hinkley confirmed the story and suggests he was not backwards in coming forward.

“I was giving the coaching team a spray. They went out on a Wednesday night and we were playing on the Saturday,” Hinkley said on SEN’s Sportsday.

“The players weren’t out, they were in bed doing the right thing.

“The CEO, Keith Thomas, never once raised his voice to me. Only ever said, ‘China is really, really important, Kenny, we have to win in China’.

“I’ve got my coaching team - Michael Voss was part of it, Chad Cornes, Nathan Bassett, there’s plenty of them - they were all out for the whole night and had a good night.

“Day off on Thursday and they thought it was ok, and I wasn’t as happy as they were, let’s put it that way. They figured out what I meant.

“There was no wiggle room.”

Thankfully the Power got the job done on the club's first foray into China.

The best sprays Cornes copped

Port Adelaide great Cornes was on the receiving end of a few decent sprays during his career.

Cornes would go on to become a premiership player, two-time All-Australian and Port Hall of Fame inductee but not before receiving some very stern words at different stages.

During his early days playing SANFL with Glenelg, a young and fun-loving Cornes had to be pulled into line by a certain club legend.

“My first ever one was from Nick Chigwidden, the Glenelg captain, in one of my first games for Glenelg,” Cornes said.

“He thought I was stuffing around in the warm-up. He came straight up to me and gave me a real spray which straightened me up.

“Then he also got myself, Matty Bode and ‘The Package’ James Byrne - after we lost the first final we stupidly went out to The Grand (in Glenelg) until about 2 or 3 on the Sunday night.

“He found out and that was a big spray.”

The decision to rock up to training with some questionable silverware also led to some choice words from Bays greats Wayne and Alan Stringer.

“The Stringer brothers who coached Glenelg for a couple of years, they had 100 golden rules you had to abide by,” he added.

“One was you couldn’t wear earrings and I was going through the stage where I thought an earring looked pretty cool in the left ear. I wore it to training and I can’t say what he said but that was harsh.

“It was Alan - ’Your dad (Graham) never would have done something like this!’.”

Cornes spent the last two seasons of his career at GWS and even at a new club he wasn’t safe.

Leon Cameron once took aim at the man who had joined the fledgling Giants after 239 games with the Power.

“The ones that hit me the most was when the coach had thought about it and it’s cool, calm and collected, but it’s brutal feedback,” he recalls.

“Leon Cameron at the Giants the year he took over, I just had a knee operation, it didn’t go to plan, I was homesick even at that age.

“He goes, ‘Look mate, this is not the Chad Cornes I thought I was getting. Lift your game or just go home, we don’t want you if you’re going to be here with this attitude’.”