Bloodthirsty Power pack booing Ken Hinkley is a distasteful look

The Port Adelaide mob is again at the gates with their flaming torches and pitchforks.

They want the head of the coach on a stake and won’t be satisfied until the guillotine falls.

They’ll get Ken eventually … had Saturday blown out to a hundred points it might have been now.

What they’ll picket and riot for then is anyone’s guess.

The anointed replacement (Josh Carr) is currently running the midfield… and that’s where the most worrying deterioration has set in.

Ken Hinkley is again coaching for his job and that’s an exhausting place to be.

He did it right through 2023 and succeeded like few in that predicament ever had.

Put at the end of the plank, he coached superbly and galvanised his players.

They strung together 13 wins to meet the demands of the club but were gassed when it actually mattered in September.

This season was the opportunity to pace a campaign with a little breathing space. That is now gone.

A coach in his 12th season without a premiership won’t survive a campaign that regresses from top four to missing the eight.

A couple more bad losses and the environment will be combustible and the mob eventually sated.

What was most glaring about Port on Saturday was the lack of commitment and response from the players.

The maniacal attitude they took to Geelong not that long ago or the determination to rectify a mess that produced the stirring come-from-behind win over Hawthorn.

That attitude and unity has been the marker of the Hinkley era – its absence against Brisbane was stark.

And so the angry mob booed the coach. It’s a nasty way to treat a good and loyal man.

I saw it once down at Kardinia Park… the crowd booed Malcolm Blight at three-quarter time of a game in June.

The Cats got up to win that day but Blight determined that night it would be his last year at the club and followed through despite making the Grand Final.

Port are patently not good enough to challenge the top end. They have gently tried to share that with their supporter base. It has fallen on deaf ears.

The angry mob wants the coach’s head on a stake and won’t be satisfied until the guillotine falls.

What happens after that… that’s of no consequence to the bloodthirsty pack… they just want a scalp.

The irony there is the mob wanted Chris Fagan’s scalp a few weeks back as well. They’ll get Kenny eventually… and presumably that’ll fix everything.