Opinion
Astonishing backlash launched at Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley after the post-game scenes on Friday night. So he made a plane motion and aimed a few slights at Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan.
And now the football world’s in an uproar.
“It’s not a good look.”
That’s what so many have said. You can’t have coaches responding to players, can you?
Um, why not?
With players constantly sledging one another, with presidents exchanging barbs, why are coaches held to another standard of behaviour? Particularly when they’re retaliating, rather than instigating.
When Mick Malthouse coached Collingwood, he shared a heated exchange with St Kilda’s Stephen Milne. Go back over 30 years to Collingwood’s 1990 drought-breaking premiership, and Leigh Matthews threatened Essendon’s Terry Daniher, telling him that Gavin Brown (who Daniher had struck and knocked out in a melee) would be back for him.
There have been times coaches have interacted with players, fans, administrators. Why has this one gone nuclear?
Media constantly lament the lack of character in the game. As far as Jack Ginnivan is concerned, they either criticise him for being Jack Ginnivan or commend him for being Jack Ginnivan.
Two years ago, he was flogged for taking selfies post-game. Now it’s a fashionable thing at Hawthorn. He was smashed for dying his hair blond. And then Kane Cornes, flipping on his stance on Ginnivan, did the same as an endorsement. Ginnivan was bashed for engineering frees. Now it’s an art form.
Geez, this industry is sickening in its sanctimony.
But it’s worse with its hypocrisy.
Ginnivan was lightly condemned (by some) for posting on social media that he would see former teammate, Brodie Grundy, in a fortnight, at a Hawthorn-Sydney preliminary final, suggesting an encounter with Port Adelaide would be of no consequence.
It’s all great. It’s all Jack being Jack.
It’s all fun.
However, when a coach adds a bit of theatre, uh uh, we can’t have that.
Ken Hinkley exchanges words with Hawthorn players. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
As Hawthorn captain James Sicily verbally retaliated against Hinkley, ex-Hawthorn captain and current commentator, Luke Hodge, suggested what Hinkley had done wasn’t a good look.
Really, Luke?
But Sicily vehemently and animatedly retaliating against Hinkley, while preparing to chair off Luke Breust, is fine?You’re okay with that?
Sicily could’ve easily consoled Ginnivan (who didn’t look flustered, but I’m sure the PR narrative will emerge he was devastated in the continuing vilification of Hinkley) and told him it was okay; Sicily could’ve turned to Hinkley and calmly told him his sledging wasn’t on right now (given they were honouring Breust); Sicily could’ve ignored Hinkley; but Sicily decided to turn it into a long, heated demonstration.
And for the record, I have no problem with Sicily flying the flag for his teammate. Good on Sicily. He’s entitled to respond how he likes. If I supported Hawthorn, I’m sure I’d be proud of Sicily being so passionate. But it’s bemusing that Hodge is so selective with what’s okay and what isn’t.
In his press conference, Sam Mitchell endorsed Sicily’s response as a captain standing up for a teammate. Again, love it. Great. But then Mitchell reframed the exchange – well, Jack Ginnivan’s just a young man, and Ken Hinkley’s a much older man who’s been in the game a long, long, long time, so he should know better.
It’s amazing, it really is amazing, how everybody absolves Ginnivan in all this.
Ginnivan might be a much younger man, but he has form. He went to the races the night before last year’s grand final. You could see Craig McRae, who always acquits himself so evenly, openly frustrated with him and telling him to read the room.
Despite playing in a premiership, Collingwood keenly offloaded Ginnivan, and not for very much (and even less now the Hawks have finished above the Pies). That says something, doesn’t it?
Jack Ginnivan. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
The Hawks knew Ginnivan could be a character. The night before their first final against the Bulldogs, Ginnivan was seen at a pub. Well, nothing wrong with him grabbing dinner, is there? No.
But here’s the point: while Hinkley might be older and more experienced, Ginnivan’s been a lightning rod for attention in the last three years – some of it undeserved (like the media’s castigation of him for drawing frees), and some of it warranted.
Right now, especially during your finals campaign, you’d be telling Ginnivan just to shut up and play the game. As McRae opined: “Read the room, Jack.”
If Ginnivan wants to put himself out there (and that’s entirely his prerogative), if he wants to say whatever he wants to say, then what’s the issue if somebody – anybody – responds?
It’s not like what Hinkley said was especially vitriolic or obscene. In any other arena, it would be seen as a receipt.
But here, apparently it’s a no-no because … well, I don’t really know.
I wonder if this whole matter would’ve been reframed as harmless (and dismissible) banter had Luke Hodge (and, later, Jordan Lewis) not been there to voice their parochialism as part of the media.
For me, this really seems about double standards, and a running commentary that has risen to a hysterical epoch.
We’ll get the string of apologies over the next few days. All the defusing of an incident, everybody sorry for the way it was handled, everybody promising to do better … well, until they don’t.
The strangest thing is that, this time, Ginnivan’s on the positive side. It’s almost like a change of stripes has flipped him from villain to hero.
Ginnivan can choose his path, rightly or wrongly. Some will say he’s just an impetuous young man. Yes, he is. And there’s several hundred more of them in the AFL who aren’t behaving like this.
Ginnivan’s going to be Ginnivan. Good on him.
But when you make those decisions to put yourself out there – especially in this age of social media and clickbait journalism – you have to prepared for any potential repercussions.
How some indemnify him, and claim it’s okay for him to do what he wants to do, but God forbid anybody responds, is baffling.
Good on everybody for playing their part – Sicily for defending his teammate, Mitchell for defending his captain, and Hinkley for receipting Ginnivan’s smartarsery.
Really, nothing more to see here.
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