Opinion Postcards From The Edge

[Journeying]

Mod's Note: It might be worthwhile to collect the emails sent to the PAFC to protest the coaching decision.

Feel free to add to this thread.


Long time BF reader. First time poster.

Just wrote an email to the club. Wanted to share.

---

Howdy,

I won't bother with a very long-winded email. But I'll write enough to get my point across.

I've been a member from 97-02 as a child, then 08-15 - buying memberships for myself from the age of 14. Between 02 & 08 I attended most home games with family friends. Highlights including Round 22, 2002; the '04 Prelim; and the smashing of West Coast mid-2007. (Hoff had a day out). Heck, even attending the disaster years including the 130 point belting at the hands of Collingwood in 2011 wasn't awful. However, watching today's game sucked. Why? I wanted us to lose. Why? So that change would come about.

I stopped being a member only after moving to Perth. (I actually wrote to the club about a more equitable WA membership - where you get to see both Perth games (when there are two games here) instead of just picking one, but apparently this logical request couldn't be processed). I still have attended every game here over the past four years. And I watch every week.

I'm writing to say that I would like to see changes at the club. I'm not sure if you'll listen to supporters unless it starts to impact financially. So I won't be purchasing any more merchandise until there are changes - especially with regards to positions held by the head coach & even chairman.

Co-captains was evidence that the club doesn't care much about their lifeblood - the supporters. We've now had five consecutive years of mediocrity. Ladder finishes of 9th, 10th, 7th, 10th, 10th. The only finals appearance was classic Port of this era - heartbreaking and humiliating. (I guarantee there was no worse place to be as a Power fan that night than Perth). And then to have the final minutes repeated in eerily similar fashion to the exact same team less than a year later was comical.

Here we are again at the end of another disappointing season. The enjoyment of football is fading fast. This isn't entirely based on success. I know this because I could attend games where we were getting smashed (I was there at the '07 GF... OK that wasn't enjoyable but I was there) and still find the experience meaningful. For example, watching a random home loss to Brisbane around 2012 in the wet at Footy Park. It was still a great day out. Getting around a then emerging Matt Lobbe - & watching a young Wingard snag a goal or two.

What's changed? Lack of hope for the future. The media department may point to Rozee or Duursma as evidence of hope. And they are brilliant to watch. But I don't trust the coaches to develop them. Look at Wingard as example. Or Wines.

It feels like we are going nowhere under current leadership.

Administration needs to be held to account. And such an email like this is my personal attempt to do so.

Football isn't the be all and end all. But it can be something that gives meaning to a lot of people. Those employed to provide that meaning should treat their positions with absolute respect.

9th, 10th, 7th, 10th, 10th.

We need change. Desperately. Or a lot of people are going to walk away from this club. People who stuck with it through the aforementioned losses of 119, 132, 167 (a week after 132). I know my history. So should the club. Respect tradition. No co-captains. No nonsense. Strive for success. Don't accept mediocrity.

Thanks & kind regards.

 

[Andre]

I've decided to hit up Keith's email as well. Adding below to what I sent to the Membership department earlier. I don't expect a reply (or at least outside 'that's disappointing, at least it's not 2012!' emoji emoji).

Greeting Keith (or lackey stuck reading these emails),
I sent the email below to the Membership department this morning, but feel they are not the one's to address the issues outlined. I've seen the spineless media spin put out this afternoon that Ken '5 years without a finals win' Hinkley is our ticket to success and weep at what my club has become. Perennial basket cases like Fremantle, Carlton and St. Kilda have acted this year, yet here we are still. Fremantle, Carlton and St. Kilda. A club never to win a flag, one that hasn't won since they've been unable to pay players via brown paper bags and one that last won a flag when the world worried about the Soviets destroying us all!

I ask one simple question. If Ken's contract expired today would you given him a contract extension? If the answer is yes, how could you possibly justify it? If the answer is no, then there is no reason to not sack him today. The decline in Memberships and attendances this year will only be much worse next year. With a correspondingly lot bigger hit to the bottom line then paying Ken out. Ask our financial guru Koch to explain the sunk cost fallacy (along with why he and club are failing to avoid it with Hinkley).

Regards,
André

 

[rumoursofwinter]

For what it's worth, this was my email. There's a lot more to express but this was it.


Hi Keith.

Please note that my membership will not be renewed.

The associated memberships of my wife and daughter will also not be renewed.

I no longer wish to support the port adelaide football club whilst it is coached by Ken Hinkley.

The football club under the guidance of Hinkley is not something I wish to be associated with.

Good luck in improving the club over the off season.

Perhaps it would be best to look at the motivations of those involved.

I hope you are able to leave the club well positioned for your successor.

Cheers.

thomas.

 

[S.Patrol.G]

Dear Keith

On 26 July, 2019 I sent the following email to the membership department of the football club:

To Whom it May Concern:

Please remove the auto-renewal function for the following memberships:

1. 
   
2. 
   

As a long-time member of the club it hurts me that I have to make this decision, but I can no longer accept that the leadership of the club is in line with the club's creed.

I have no faith in the senior coach and therefore, by extension, the Board. The club has become idle. Decisions over the past couple of years have highlighted that our club's great heritage and history are secondary to the whim of a senior coach, who has run roughshod over the very fabric of our club, supported by ill-thought reasons and a weak-willed Board.

It can be nothing other than a disgrace that the #1 guernsey and sole captain was removed. This decision and lack of strength from a complicit Board angered many, including myself, and it is an action I still cannot forgive.

Continually, our Chairman has referred to us as "a little club from Alberton". How does that celebrate our "unexcelled achievements" (the most successful football club in Australia) or our "enviable tradition"?

Continually, our senior coach and Chairman have implored we need to be "more like" other clubs. When has Port Adelaide needed to be anything other than Port Adelaide?

Continually, we have failed to see support from the CEO or club as a whole around the concerted and active push to see us playing regularly in our famous "Prison Bars" guernsey.

Continually, we have seen a Board reward a coach who has delivered no success in 7 years and who threatened to walk out on the club. A strong Board would have sent him on his way.

I could go on, but I fear any or all of what I say will fall on deaf ears. We have become a club no longer connected to its members. We are as far from being Port Adelaide as we have ever been.

Finally, I need to make it clear this is not a decision I take lightly, but I am broken. For years now, I have looked for a glimmer of hope, but it is well and truly gone. For the first time ever, against Brisbane, I left a game early. I did not watch the Richmond game. I will not attend the GWS game. I will not return until the senior coach, the Board and its no hopers are cleaned out.

I will always love the Port Adelaide Football Club. I will be back when it is, again, the Port Adelaide Football Club.

I appreciated receiving a direct reply, the same day, from Matthew Richardson, where he addressed some of my concerns. He was disappointed that members were losing faith with the club, hoped I would change my mind and hoped I would see some actions that reinforced that this is your football club.

Unfortunately, after listening to your press conference this morning and radio interview on SEN, my faith has been further damaged. I have no hope that, under the current Board, the Port Adelaide Football Club can be anything more than mediocre. Nothing I have heard or seen, since half-time of the Brisbane game can have me believe the club is well-coached or trending towards the Premiership you believe Ken will deliver. Everything since then has been more of the same- underachievement and disappointment.

The Board has stuck with a coach that has delivered no success over 7 seasons, a coach who has so little expectation from a Board that they are comfortable to back him not just next season, but also the one after that. Nothing suggests to me Ken will deliver this club its next Premiership. Since his arrival our trajectory has trended downwards. I have had enough of the excuses.

I believe it is incredibly ignorant of the fundamental problems at the club to think members will return in 2020.

I wish you well in what must be an incredibly demanding job, where I know you put in exorbitant hours. I hope the success you have predicted for the future, under Ken, is accurate.

Regardless, I will not be renewing the long-standing memberships of myself and my children in 2020.

Kind regards

 

[Ford Fairlane]

I have started this thread 'Postcards from the Edge' for emails sent to the club to protest the ongoing appointment of the coach.

It might encourage others to do the same and give others who want to voice their opinion a few ideas for what to include.

Feel free to add your email to this thread.

 

[PAFC27]

I have started this thread 'Postcards from the Edge' for emails sent to the club to protest the ongoing appointment of the coach.

It might encourage others to do the same and give others who want to voice their opinion a few ideas for what to include.

Feel free to add your email to this thread.

Fantastic thread idea

 

[Enviable Tradition]

I have started this thread 'Postcards from the Edge' for emails sent to the club to protest the ongoing appointment of the coach.

It might encourage others to do the same and give others who want to voice their opinion a few ideas for what to include.

Feel free to add your email to this thread.

Maybe some smart journo can collate them into an open letter to the club to run as a 2 page spread in the Advertiser.

On SM-G960F using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Andre]

Maybe some smart journo can collate them into an open letter to the club to run as a 2 page spread in the Advertiser.

On SM-G960F using BigFooty.com mobile app

Lol, two page spread they'd do would be happy clapper posts from Facebook about loving that Ken is staying and the boys are so close. Go pear!

 

[ZeroGlass]

Dear Bono,

Having a great time in California, took forever to find camp, no street names out here in the Mojave.

The Edge

 

[manureid]

To Whom it may concern,
* you and the horses you rode in on.

Basically.

 

[Alberton Proud]

Dear Bono,

Having a great time in California, took forever to find camp, no street names out here in the Mojave.

The Edge

 

[Schulzenfest]

Dear Die Hard,

You rock. Especially when that guy was on the roof.

P.S. Do you know Mad Max?

 

[Lockhart Road]

My email to the Club went out late Tuesday afternoon. It was copied to a number of people both inside and outside the Club, one of the latter group being Ford Fairlane.

Ford has requested that I copy my email in to this thread. There is a particular section, near the end, that contains a suggestion to the Club re a possible solution for Members such as myself who wish to continue to financially support PAFC for our 150 Anniversary Year 2020 ... yet do not want to risk such support being interpreted or used as approval in any way, shape or form of the retention of Ken Hinkley as senior coach.

I’ve been chewing this over. Yes, I readily agreed that publicising my suggestion may assist others in my boat who are seeking some way to row it. But I’ve been applying thought to whether I should copy the entire email here ... as it has content which I adjudge to be ‘matter-of-fact’ but to which others would apply vocabulary of their own.

Having announced elsewhere more than once that I am an ‘all or nothing type of person’, the decision has become more obvious the longer I have pondered it. Everything goes in.

This, in its own font to differentiate it from the rest of this post’s text, is my email, sent Tuesday, to Ben Demertzis:


Dear Ben,

You very kindly, several months ago, cancelled at my request the auto-renew on my International PAFC Membership, which includes the AFL season Global Pass.

I’ve been in a quandary as to what to do for 2020 ... until the moment I saw certain announcements made by the Club yesterday (Monday) morning - on the basis of winning one football match: versus a wounded Freo.

Upon such a flimsy fulcrum the scales were tipped and an extremely important Club decision was dropped upon us.

Flipping a coin would have had more authority.


NB: I wish to remain a Member of the Club for the 150th Anniversary Year.


However, I refuse to pay money to remain a Member of any part of the Club that retains Ken Hinkley as Senior Coach.

He is - by my personal judgement - a millstone, a noose, around the Club’s neck.

Simply put, I have no faith that the Club will ever win an AFL flag with Hinkley as senior coach. I have felt this way for years. He is devoid of the sort of luck - yes, LUCK - that any and every senior coach needs to win an AFL flag. I’d even go so far as to estimate that Hinkley may be a jinx.

He is, without doubt, a clown.

He lost the last remaining little bit of me forever the instant he threw that cup of Chinese tea over his shoulder in Shanghai.

He does something as racially disrespectful as that for the TV camera ... on behalf of the Port Adelaide Football Club ... a clown act ....

And he gets away with it.

He does the finger sign 1 and 0 for the TV camera. He copies the bow and arrow for the TV camera. He walks on the oval grinning into the TV camera after a pathetic loss to Hawthorn. He uses words like “terrorise” on national TV. He yells “Hoff! Hoff! Hoff! Hoff!” into the mike at the B&F. He tries to be a ‘bloke’, and fails comprehensively at a task that is so obviously unnatural to him.

He objects to going to school to learn a thing or two about modern coaching, and he announces that coaching techniques like heading down to the bench at strategic times during a game, even for a minute, are beneath him ... best left to “Vossy and the boys” while he sits rigidly aloof and above it all in his glass tower chain-drinking from cans appropriately branded ‘ZERO’.

And he gets away with all of this (schitt).

Hinkley is an embarrassment to those like me - and mine - those I call REAL people, who compare him and his performances to model footballers and coaches - winning footballers and coaches and Port Adelaide champions - like Fos Williams and Jack Cahill and Geof Motley and Russell Ebert, and winning administrators like Bob McLean.

Keith Thomas take note. Bob, too, was a Norwood Flog. A far better one than you have turned out to be.


Yes, I am the product of a bygone era.


I am proud of it. I can live in the past and love it ... and I can live in the present at the same time; I can walk and whistle - even breathe and scratch my nuts - all at the same time.

I’m not proud of the present.

But I am proud of PAFC’s past - so proud in fact that I have decided that in 2020 I may well go in search of a return to those past eras, so to speak.

No, I have no intention of joining Fos and Big Bob, no intention to kick the bucket.

Sorry about that, Chairman Moi.

To get around the Hinkley obstacle ... to give the spectre of Hinkley as wide a berth as I can ... I am willing to financially support the ‘Prison Bars’ in 2020, the Club’s 150th Anniversary year, in one of two ways ... perhaps even both:

1. A Port Adelaide MAGPIES Membership and / or

2. A one-off ‘Prison Bars 150 Membership’ - created by the Club specially for 2020.

Once the barrage of emails coming your way has died down a little, if you could find space and time and energy and headspace enough to give me your advice I will much appreciate it.

I have copied others on this latest membership idea of mine just in case there occurs any blocking this week, accidental of course, of incoming emails with ‘Membership’ in the title.

Ben ... please advise, mate ... keep fit and well ... and thank you.

Cheers


Ben Demertzis is too good for this Club. He is his own sort of champion. Despite the digital avalanche that has, still is, dumping so heavily upon him, he keeps his head up, above the mud, grits his teeth, and does his job ... better than I or anyone else has a right to expect. Ben replied to me yesterday, inside 24 hours. Here is his email:


Thanks for your email.

We will have some changes to our membership program for 2020 – but these are not locked in just yet.

So the best advice I can offer for now…..lets wait until early October, I will be a lot clearer on what options are in place, then let’s talk again.

I hope this helps for now.


I thanked Ben, told him that early October is fine with me, and that I look forward to further exchange with him.

If any of the above is found to be helpful, thank Ford. He, like Ben, is a jewel in the crown that PAFC used to wear on its head, oh so proudly ... but now keeps hidden in the attic, oh so timidly.

 

[portfan36]

I sent this to membership@pafc.com.au last Thursday:

Good afternoon

FYI, if you have not gauged the level of discontent that supporters have with the current coach and the administration who have supported Ports sub-par performance for 5 years now, I think it is in your best interests to look forward 12 months to see the basket case Port will be if action isn't taken this year.

Memberships next year (including mine), you simply wont receive.

Ken Hinkley maybe a nice person but unfortunately he is not a good coach. The last 5 years has proven this claim. I truly believe you need to terminate his contract immediately or you may place Port into a point of no return.

I for one would be willing to commit to a debt demolition to help cover the costs of terminating his contract as would many other Port supporters. I hope the PAFC Board have done the sums and worked out that the loss of members next year is more than likely to outweigh the cost to terminate his contract. And remember, it's easier to retain supporters than find new ones.

I hope you listen to what I and a hell of a lot of Port supporters out there have to say because we are sick of being taken for granted.

Regards
********

Not surprisingly, there has been no reply