Lockhart Road
Cultural Attache
- Mar 26, 2013
- 5,424
- 27,766
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
- Other Teams
- Port Adelaide Magpies
In the decade-plus that I applied myself to helping PAFC secure a million-dollar-per-annum China partner I never once heard anyone say, as a positive, that they had become, or would become, a paid-up member of the club … “Because David Koch is chairman.”
Neither have I heard the same rationale applied to Ken Hinkley as incentive to take out membership.
These two since October 2012 are meant to have been mere ‘members’ themselves - of a team, a team within a team, at Alberton. But this was a dream. No, this was a lie. On 2 October 2012 when interviewed on becoming president of PAFC and changing his title to chairman, David Koch said something to the effect of: “I will never interfere in the operations of the Football Department.”
It was just the first lie.
When the PAFC board of directors came to Hong Kong in May 2014, and Koch took centre-stage and the microphone in the main restaurant of the Hong Kong Football Club, he revealed a hidden truth that has grown into something much too unpleasant, as far as I am concerned, to remain hidden to the extent it has. If I’d been able to see into the future, it would’ve been a red flag, and I would not have helped the club take things any further.
Easy for me to say that now, I know. Hindsight has not just 20:20 vision it has genius IQ.
Koch, at that luncheon, introduced himself to a room of 180 strangers in a foreign location with these words: “I am a professional bullshitter.” Put this to AI and the translation would be: “I am paid to tell lies.” (And if you believe anything I say to you, then you are the mug.)
It was aimed to produce a laugh. It was meant to reveal that Koch was not really a god on high, even though he thought he was, that he was down to earth and one of the boys. The Chinese people in the room didn’t get it. I had several as guests at my table. (I’d co-operated with Koch’s daughter to set the function up and market it.) Puzzlement all round. In Hong Kong nobody talks that way, and nor should they.
David Koch was off to a bad start. Only he could keep coming up with dumb stunts that made things worse (e.g.: On the Grass with the Farriss Bros.). Fixed in Koch’s mind was that he was a god and everybody worshipped him; even people in foreign lands who’d never heard of him worshipped him, he’d decided. Even when he was only No. 1 ticket holder, he thought that gave him licence to playact as the god of the little battler club that rose to the national stage from the swamp at Alberton - something to which he contributed zilch.
Koch has always been a particular kind of god, by his bizarre standards - standards that would’ve been torn to shreds in any schoolyard in the Port district. PAFC has, through its history, produced a number of gods. Every one of them played football, and played it better than anyone else. One died this week - Geof Motley, whom I watched with my father as he kicked his seven goals in the second half of the 1957 SANFL grand final. David Koch has never known which end of a football to point at the goals, let alone kick one. God? For godsake. Learn a bit about PAFC first, David.
I have opened this thread at this particular juncture because it’s about time I did. Coming into the finals this year I knew - I knew - that we would go out in straight sets and in ugly indigestible fashion. How did I know that? Because that’s the sort of failure the Koch-Hinkley-Cardone combo have made themselves the gods of. On the Thursday before the 2021 prelim final, Richo gave me a call out of the blue. I’ve confessed elsewhere that at that stage I was supporting him as CEO, for my own reasons - for three years maximum. Richo was so confident we would beat the Bulldogs and get to the Big Dance. His excitement, his certainty, was palpable down the line. I said: “Let’s wait and see.”
Years earlier, latest 2017, I’d assured him: “We will never win a flag under Ken Hinkley.” He was flabbergasted. “Why?” he asked. I ran off a list: negativity, pessimism, stubbornness, lack of intelligence, loser mentality, over-focus on being the players’ protective god above all else versus that other god, the dark one - the chairman. At the time I hadn’t dared to add the worst curse of all: Hinks the Jinx. Hinkley carries with him, yes, a jinx. His record proves it. Richo has never accepted what I told him in 2017, or was it 2016? Whatever, I was wrong both times. It wasn’t a flag that Hinkley would never coach us to … it was the Big Dance itself.
This post is just the opener. I have much more to say - some of it not for the first time. But all of what I say will be new. Because we have a new situation. We have a Red Raw New Situation. We have a senior coach who has been signed into his twelfth and thirteenth seasons, in anticipation, in an act of guesswork - again - of him doing something he has never ever been able to do. Never in his football life. Never has he been able to win when it really matters - not as a player, not as a senior AFL coach. Not once.
And we have a chairman who has thrown himself into his own twelfth and thirteenth years joined at the hip with this failed senior coach who seems to have something over him … something on him.
Come clean, David. What is it? What does Hinkley have on you?
Was it 2017? Was it something you gave in on, surrendered to, and promised at that emergency meeting around the Hinkley kitchen table after your disgraceful performance post-match, after the elimination final versus West Coast, when you abused the players, some of whom were in tears - yes, abused, in Hinkley’s mind and by Hinkley’s own standards whatever they be … and according to the favourite uncle-of-my-favourite-players act that Hinkley perfected that Saturday night … in order to fight back against you. And you flew halfway across this continent of ours, to distant Bungan Beach, carrying with you your ignorance, your unawareness of what you’d done … and you got a phone call from KT in a state of panic … and you had to fly straight back … to the Hinkley kitchen. Where you gave in.
You surrendered standing, quivering, in a broadening puddle of cold sweat.
Is that what Hinkley has on you, David?
Because if Hinkley hasn’t got that or something else on you … then you have no excuse for the nauseous performance you continue to put up. And therefore it’s all on you.
ALL. ON. YOU.
Neither have I heard the same rationale applied to Ken Hinkley as incentive to take out membership.
These two since October 2012 are meant to have been mere ‘members’ themselves - of a team, a team within a team, at Alberton. But this was a dream. No, this was a lie. On 2 October 2012 when interviewed on becoming president of PAFC and changing his title to chairman, David Koch said something to the effect of: “I will never interfere in the operations of the Football Department.”
It was just the first lie.
When the PAFC board of directors came to Hong Kong in May 2014, and Koch took centre-stage and the microphone in the main restaurant of the Hong Kong Football Club, he revealed a hidden truth that has grown into something much too unpleasant, as far as I am concerned, to remain hidden to the extent it has. If I’d been able to see into the future, it would’ve been a red flag, and I would not have helped the club take things any further.
Easy for me to say that now, I know. Hindsight has not just 20:20 vision it has genius IQ.
Koch, at that luncheon, introduced himself to a room of 180 strangers in a foreign location with these words: “I am a professional bullshitter.” Put this to AI and the translation would be: “I am paid to tell lies.” (And if you believe anything I say to you, then you are the mug.)
It was aimed to produce a laugh. It was meant to reveal that Koch was not really a god on high, even though he thought he was, that he was down to earth and one of the boys. The Chinese people in the room didn’t get it. I had several as guests at my table. (I’d co-operated with Koch’s daughter to set the function up and market it.) Puzzlement all round. In Hong Kong nobody talks that way, and nor should they.
David Koch was off to a bad start. Only he could keep coming up with dumb stunts that made things worse (e.g.: On the Grass with the Farriss Bros.). Fixed in Koch’s mind was that he was a god and everybody worshipped him; even people in foreign lands who’d never heard of him worshipped him, he’d decided. Even when he was only No. 1 ticket holder, he thought that gave him licence to playact as the god of the little battler club that rose to the national stage from the swamp at Alberton - something to which he contributed zilch.
Koch has always been a particular kind of god, by his bizarre standards - standards that would’ve been torn to shreds in any schoolyard in the Port district. PAFC has, through its history, produced a number of gods. Every one of them played football, and played it better than anyone else. One died this week - Geof Motley, whom I watched with my father as he kicked his seven goals in the second half of the 1957 SANFL grand final. David Koch has never known which end of a football to point at the goals, let alone kick one. God? For godsake. Learn a bit about PAFC first, David.
I have opened this thread at this particular juncture because it’s about time I did. Coming into the finals this year I knew - I knew - that we would go out in straight sets and in ugly indigestible fashion. How did I know that? Because that’s the sort of failure the Koch-Hinkley-Cardone combo have made themselves the gods of. On the Thursday before the 2021 prelim final, Richo gave me a call out of the blue. I’ve confessed elsewhere that at that stage I was supporting him as CEO, for my own reasons - for three years maximum. Richo was so confident we would beat the Bulldogs and get to the Big Dance. His excitement, his certainty, was palpable down the line. I said: “Let’s wait and see.”
Years earlier, latest 2017, I’d assured him: “We will never win a flag under Ken Hinkley.” He was flabbergasted. “Why?” he asked. I ran off a list: negativity, pessimism, stubbornness, lack of intelligence, loser mentality, over-focus on being the players’ protective god above all else versus that other god, the dark one - the chairman. At the time I hadn’t dared to add the worst curse of all: Hinks the Jinx. Hinkley carries with him, yes, a jinx. His record proves it. Richo has never accepted what I told him in 2017, or was it 2016? Whatever, I was wrong both times. It wasn’t a flag that Hinkley would never coach us to … it was the Big Dance itself.
This post is just the opener. I have much more to say - some of it not for the first time. But all of what I say will be new. Because we have a new situation. We have a Red Raw New Situation. We have a senior coach who has been signed into his twelfth and thirteenth seasons, in anticipation, in an act of guesswork - again - of him doing something he has never ever been able to do. Never in his football life. Never has he been able to win when it really matters - not as a player, not as a senior AFL coach. Not once.
And we have a chairman who has thrown himself into his own twelfth and thirteenth years joined at the hip with this failed senior coach who seems to have something over him … something on him.
Come clean, David. What is it? What does Hinkley have on you?
Was it 2017? Was it something you gave in on, surrendered to, and promised at that emergency meeting around the Hinkley kitchen table after your disgraceful performance post-match, after the elimination final versus West Coast, when you abused the players, some of whom were in tears - yes, abused, in Hinkley’s mind and by Hinkley’s own standards whatever they be … and according to the favourite uncle-of-my-favourite-players act that Hinkley perfected that Saturday night … in order to fight back against you. And you flew halfway across this continent of ours, to distant Bungan Beach, carrying with you your ignorance, your unawareness of what you’d done … and you got a phone call from KT in a state of panic … and you had to fly straight back … to the Hinkley kitchen. Where you gave in.
You surrendered standing, quivering, in a broadening puddle of cold sweat.
Is that what Hinkley has on you, David?
Because if Hinkley hasn’t got that or something else on you … then you have no excuse for the nauseous performance you continue to put up. And therefore it’s all on you.
ALL. ON. YOU.
