I want to go back over the fallout of the performances from two of the preliminary finalists, including my very team, Port Adelaide, and how they’ve been able to handle it.
Listening to Caroline Wilson speaking on 5AA, she described something the club has been upset with since the game.
“There is a level of disappointment from Port Adelaide that probably the two strongest critics in Adelaide over the last week - and this is only second-hand - are former stars and champions of the club in Warren Tredrea and Kane Cornes,” she said.
“Kane, who I work with, I don’t think was as savage as Warren necessarily, I think Kane still has a close relationship with Ken Hinkley.
“But they were pretty savage on some of their ex-teammates at Port Adelaide… I don’t think the criticism is unwarranted.”
I was wondering why the club would be upset with strong criticism from a couple of former players about a performance that the club itself, via the footy boss Chris Davies, described as an abomination.
Now I’m no English major, right? I haven’t been to Harvard, in fact I got 55 in Year 12 and that was largely because my wife Lucy did all my homework for me at school.
I’m no expert, but “abomination.” Is there a stronger word to describe a poor performance from a footy team? I can’t think of one. That is from their footy boss.
Why would the Port Adelaide Football Club care what I say, or how could they think it is unfair with what we’ve said?
My role in this was to show some clips from the first quarter. Everyone was saying ‘what happened to Port Adelaide in the first quarter,’ and I said ‘I’ll show you what happened!’
For Footy Classified, I put together about a minute and a half of clips where Port Adelaide players either shirked the contest, didn’t go hard enough or the Western Bulldogs wanted it more.
This is fact-based stuff, that you can see and you can make a call on.
How sensitive are clubs in relation to criticism after a performance like that? How sensitive should they be?
It got me to an interesting thought. As supporters, what do you expect from former players of your club?
I went to a breakfast with Garry Lyon yesterday, and he explained that role at Melbourne, being a former captain and legend, how to publicly talk about some really underwhelming performances for 20 years, and how you go about that.
Some people want you to be extremely hard on your former club, some people want you to give it a favourable lens. For me I’ll just call it as I see it.
I’ve praised Ken Hinkley more than anyone probably has, but when you front up and serve up a performance like that, there’s nothing that can be said other than criticism, really.
That’s what the Port Adelaide fans, and any other footy fans, would expect.