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AFLW 2024 - Round 10 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Roast The Drag on my Intelligence, the Bane of my Existence, my unchallenged Icon of Mediocrity … that is David Koch
- Thread starter Lockhart Road
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Can she also be captain?
I'm honestly 100% onboard with her being made chairman, coach and captain. Would be better for the club.
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But the Koch appointed apparatchiks on the Board will just appoint one of their own to succeed him.
Same with Kern. Will be an in-house promotion instead of someone new.
Need completely new blood to wipe away the DK/KH stain.
I think we're doomed guys!
TeeKray
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This would certainly have been true a couple of years ago but a bit less so with the cost of money being higher now.
I also can't see how they grow revenue much from its current point without diversifying out of football and into other investments (which Koch should, theoretically, know a bit more about).
philreich
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If you look up the word hypocrite in the Oxford dictionary, I'm led to believe there's a picture of David Koch.
We've seen what ken can get out of natural talent when you put the smallest amount of expectation on them.
He's like a success black hole and couldn't win a premiership with the AFL Australian team
I’ve been thinking the same thing over the past few weeks.
I get the feeling if we want to change the coach we will have to change the president first.
He’s basically holding our club hostage and putting his ego and pride before the best interests of the club.
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Oh hell no!!!
I was at the hotel last year in Perth, catching up with a mate, the night before the game and she gave a presentation to the AFLW team. When they came out, to a person they all had glazed eyes and confused expressions.
From what I overheard, most of the girls had no idea what she was going on about and a couple said it consisted of corporate buzz words that didn't actually mean anything.
She would be worse than Kock, because she is a zealot and believes everything she says.
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For the record I think you misinterpreted my post.
I dont want Holly in as Chairman and Coach because I think she would be a success. I want her because she would fail quickly and actually create change. The reason Ken and Koch hang around is because we never finish bottom 4. Its an endless loop of mediocrity where he does enough to keep his job but never enough to win.
Holly would bottom us out and from there we can be re born, hopefully led by people who are Port Adelaide.
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The problem is who we have the debt with though Rick. While the AFL hold all our chips they dictate who runs our club. They don't care about our premiership aspirations. They just want us surviving enough to service the debt and generate media rights income. They don't want us to thrive. They want us to exist.
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I don’t enough about our debt and who gave it to comment. BankSA is one of our partners so I assume they did. AFL debt surely would be at CPI.
Ending the day TeeKray Koch should know where to diversify and so should some of the other board members. Not sure they do however. Didn’t Hawks and Pies invest heavily into Pokies? Is it ethical not sure, is it profitable? Very much so.
Using debt for example to spend on museums and precinct probably not great
How do you know she would fail.
We measure success by “making the community proud” these days
I would love to see WGT somehow roll Koch and take the chair.
Inexperienced I know but his pure passion to do the best thing for the PAFC will be enough to implement the right people to see our club rise to the top.
Inexperienced I know but his pure passion to do the best thing for the PAFC will be enough to implement the right people to see our club rise to the top.
TeeKray
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- #90
There's still over 5 months left in the off season and we're already seriously hypothesising about where we would finish if Holly Ransom were to be appointed coach. Let's save some content for the rest of the off season hey.
Schulzenfest
TheBrownDog
Maybe she'd rename us the Pirates?
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Still plenty of time to discuss disgusting teal trimmed jumpers, new logos, club song and alternate names to the Power…..
Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com
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Lockhart Road
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- #93
This would be, in my opinion, falling into the same fool’s game that the Crows came up with under Fagan - eSports, baseball, et al.
’Diversifying out of Football’ should never be written on BF, never be even whispered anywhere within earshot of Bungan Beach for fear Koch hears it and latches on to it. It would be so him.
We must, on the contrary, ’diversify’ INTO Football - a) increase revenue through memberships b) increase the worth of each classification of membership c) add at least two more Joint Major Sponsors (what happens if we lose MG?) d) make the PAFC brand worth more on a global scale, not just a national scale (this was what we set out to achieve when we started on China in 2013).
To make this happen - to boost the Football contribution to revenue where it should be, way higher than where it is - we have to go back, read the OP and start all over again.
Get rid of the current chairman. Get rid of the current senior coach. Get rid of all the other impedimenta sitting in the board room, starting with Eddie McGuire’s CEO.
Just for a start.
Sorry to reiterate what I’ve already said, but this is the core subject of this thread.
I will post a short-story on the flatlining of the membership since 2 October 2012 tomorrow.
Thank you. I always read your posts. I will do my part is calling out these frauds. I just feel deflated the system is so corrupted to give these guys immunity. It's depressing. But their day will come....
It is getting to the point where I am beginning to wonder if the boot studder is useless and has his own propaganda arm in the media.
philreich
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The Port runner would do a better job than Koch - simply because unlike Koch, he's a Port Adelaide person.
How about the Port Disruptors.
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This X Plenty!
Lockhart Road
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- #99
The PAFC Membership Numbers Illusion
Graphic by RussellEbertHandball
2012
On 2 October 2012 David Koch was appointed chairman. Within a few days he was to inherit as senior coach Ken Hinkley whose appointment he had nothing to do with. He’d brought with him media co-conspirator and chairman-in-waiting Cos Cardone as senior director - despite the reality that Cardone’s day job was to report to arch-competitor Eddie McGuire. Koch took over an AFL-audited paid-up fanbase of 35,543. When quizzed, he announced that modern-day chairmen were comfortable working remotely using hi-tech communication means and conference mentality, therefore he would have no issues operating from Bungan Beach nearer to New Zealand than to Alberton. The comfort was all for him; he did not mention if he’d considered the discomfort of those at Alberton trying to work with him.
He also announced that he would be leaving the Football side of the club to the senior coach and the senior coach’s football people, whilst he got on with stuff that he had a less remote feel for, such as finances, especially increased partnership revenue and membership. He started with a bang - a show on the MCG such as Alberton had never seen: the announcement of Renault as major partner complete with bunting, whizzbangs, pole-dancers and Renault SUVs. He also set up two corporate think tanks, a sound idea by the sound of it, which he called his Eastern Advisory Boards, comprised of volunteer Port professionals based in Sydney and Melbourne. In another interview he announced that he would be targeting Port people who lived internationally and who were keen to contribute to David Koch’s new-fangled PAFC. His words carried across oceans, certainly as far as Hong Kong, where as it turned out his daughter Sam and his grandchildren were living.
2013
By season’s end the AFL-audited paid-up fanbase was 39,838 - an increase of 4,295 or a tad over 12%. On the field Hinkley did his job by making finals, then winning one, then losing the semi after being up by nearly four goals at halftime. He then changed a winning gameday strategy of all-out attack into “Look over yer shoulders, they’re gonna come at ya.” It was a blunder. He admitted as much off-season, something he never did again. Port Adelaide lost. On the ladder we finished fifth. Over in Hong Kong things had started happening. For grand final weekend, Russell Ebert brought Tom Jonas and Tom Logan to the Hong Kong Football Club for an AusKick clinic and a ceremony at which a reciprocal partnership agreement between PAFC and HKFC was exchanged. HKFC would be our base of operations, our launch pad out of the ex-British crown colony into China. The club’s objective was to secure one more Joint Major Sponsor or a partner who would increase club revenue by $1,000,000 per annum. We reckoned it would take up to five years to pull it off. In fact it was achieved in two and a half.
2014
This was the year we still talk about. It was the year, looking back, in which we set ourselves up for a fall. We didn’t realise it at the time; we were too busy congratulating ourselves, something Big Bob McLean, Fos Williams and Jack Cahill would never have allowed. Russ, the Great Man, didn’t allow it either. On his return visit to Hong Kong for grand final week he made his feelings known over dinner in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club with my wife and myself. “We had a chance to get into the Grand Final and win the flag,” said he, “and we blew it.” AFL-audited paid-up fanbase had risen to 48,968, an increase of 9,130 or 22.9% over 2013. “Everyone at Alberton is carrying on as if we won the premiership,” Russ went on. “Oh how close we came, they tell each other. Just one kick from a grand final, they tell each other. It’s bullshit.” He shook his head. “They’ve lost the plot.” He added something uncomplimentary and unrepeatable about the chairman whom he blamed for cheer-leading the puerile atmosphere that was pervading Alberton, then he looked at my wife (who is Chinese). “What d’you think of David Koch?” he asked her. She made a face and shook her head. “Nobody in Hong Kong has heard of him.”
Despite his promise to learn from his mistakes, Ken Hinkley repeated the error he made at halftime in the semi-final in 2013. We had been top of the ladder. We were 10 and 1. Then we were 11 and 2. We actually had daylight under us, and a wind beneath our wings. But Hinkley was getting worried. He was afraid of something. The dizzying heights atop the ladder were denying oxygen to his brain, not that it’s of a size to need much. He told the players: “Watch out. Things are gonna change. We are no longer the hunters … we are the hunted. They’re gonna come after us.” He didn’t say “look over your shoulders” this time. No, he tried something new, yet identical. We finished the home and away season out of the top four. We denied ourselves the double chance and two home finals that we had, at 11 and 2, in our grasp. It was starting to manifest itself that nothing with Hinkley is ever in our grasp. It’s always just out of reach. After the 2014 prelim he was already over the hill, just over it, where the slide downwards begins. He wouldn’t need much of a nudge to end up at the bottom.
Off-field, we were doing okay. A second JMS in the guise of EnergyAustralia had been signed up in the pre-season. It was the payoff for a coincidental (concerted?) approach directly to EA in Melbourne, and from Hong Kong where their head office is located. Someone (okay … I confess, it was me) had been in the ear of a main board director of EA’s parent China Light & Power, alias CLP Power (China Light & Power Power), who was also on the board of EnergyAustralia. KT, unaware of this, went to Melbourne and made an energetic sales pitch to a receptive audience … and the deal was closed in time to announce it at Adelaide Oval on Lunar New Year’s Day, end January 2014.
2015
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
The chairman’s pro bullshit, and the chairman’s lame brain -
Couldn’t put Humpty together again …
Not ever.
It was getting towards the end of February when I realised something was going awry. The Great Man’s condemnation, the Great Man’s expression on the Great Man’s face had stayed with me. I actually hadn’t said anything negative to Russ in response. I remained in the frame of mind to give Koch as much rope as he needed to either 1) take PAFC all the way to the world stage, and do so profitably, simultaneously take the PAFC brand into the top AFL echelon and elbow the likes of Collingwood aside, also take PAFC membership to 100,000 and the club to three more premierships in the next three years, and clear the club of its infamous debt … or 2) go hang himself from the cliff-top above Bungan Beach and dangle there burning in the morning sun as he cried out for help hoping someone in New Zealand would hear him.
The end of February 2015 was when I was invited by Richo, at PAFC expense, to fly down to Melbourne. He’d organised a lunch he felt was important to our next step into China from Hong Kong. I got upgraded to business; good omen, I thought to myself, mug that I am. At Adelaide Airport I met up with my (late) colleague Peter Phillips (we all miss him terribly) who was already Down Under on business, joined Richo and KT in the transit lounge, and boarded the flight to Melbourne, all four of us together. KT was wearing a serious expression. No, KT was looking worried. Why, I dared ask, was he flying to Melbourne? Was he joining us at lunch? Yes he was. But the real reason was his attendance at what he called a ‘Road Show’ being conducted in AFL House by David Koch and Cos Cardone, PAFC’s media storm troopers. PAFC’s battering rams. PAFC’s ticking time bombs.
Special guests in addition to AFL royalty would be such members of the press corps as Caro, Whateley, Smith, Robbo, Jake Niall et al. It would be a three-day extravaganza. Three … days. You heard me right. The theme of the presentation would be the Greatest Show On Earth - PAFC Pre-Match Entertainment 2015 version. It would put what they’d seen and loved in 2014 in the shade, our ticking time bombs assured one and all. Highlight of highlights would be, no, not playing INXS louder over the Tannoy, but INXS in the flesh. At the first home game the Farriss Brothers would be on stage on the hill at the Cathedral end belting out their act, with all of Australia watching and rocking along and thinking ‘Aren’t Port Adelaide the bee’s knees’ with Never Tear Us Apart as the rattle-the-Cathedral-windows. But it would be one of the brothers who tore himself apart in a boating accident, losing a guitar finger, so the highlight turned into a lowlight. Koch stepped up and out as replacement Main Event - on the grass, in the goalsquare, as the ball was bounced; it was the moment BigFooty turned on Koch and the crucifixion began. No rope needed.
KT in Melbourne that day had confessed to me, sotto voce: “I think we might be going over the top.”
By round 2 Koch and Cardone had taken over the club. All of it. Football included. The 2014 preliminary final had done it. They had seen enough. It went to their heads. In 2015 PAFC was not only going to win the flag, PAFC was going to the moon. And, forever after, all the children, when they became grandparents, would tell their grandchildren: “I was there that night. I saw it happen. I saw the Almighty David K and Chicken Cacciatori Cardone dressed as a cooked goose rise up into the night sky with the adoring PAFC population all on their shoulders … and fly all the way to the moon. Look up at it, you can see them up there - the Port Adelaide men in the moon! They got up there, now they can’t get back because like Donald Rumsfeld and his Yanks in Iraq they had no exit plan.”
This club coup brought in Michael Voss … and provided another spectacle, something else never seen before, or since. Ken Hinkley, arms crossed, hiding behind a glare hidden behind sunnies under a gum tree on the sidelines at Albury, as Richmond thrashed our players in the pre-season. Nicks was coach delegate. He coached two of the three pre-season games. Hinkley had quit in a fit of Hinkley pique. It was a put-on to make Koch and Cardone take notice, to make them realise he was still there. They hadn’t thought to keep Hinkley informed that a coup had taken place and … by the way … Voss was coming in off the set of ‘The Recruit’ (Cardone’s brainchild) to take over as much of the Football side of things as he could handle. Aren’t you lucky, Ken, you’ve got miracle workers like us to make your job easier? It never occurred to them that Hinkley might see things differently. They hadn’t noticed that there’s a cunning side to Hinkley triggered by paranoia, lack of self-confidence, mistrust, even neurosis. What we were seeing was the Hinkley self-defence Hissy Fit in action. It was a doozy. It got him in a flash of abject panic (to be repeated in 2017) an extension on his existing contract two years in advance of his existing contract coming up for review. Hinkley was already here for good. He was also here for bad. Good or bad, all he cared about was being here for the money. In the process, across eleven years, he would deny Koch and Cardone the opportunity to show the world how good they were at selecting a senior coach. They haven’t had to do that yet. That, too, is an eleven-year world record.
In 2015 the AFL-audited paid-up fanbase rose to 54,057. Despite the Koch-Cardone hoo-hah the increase over 2014 was an ordinary 10.4%. Despite the one kick from a grand final in 2014 the rise in number was only 5,089.
Considering the euphoria that infected Alberton in the 2014-2015 between-season period, Koch and Cardone should have been expecting an increase in membership for 2015 - ‘their’ year - of at least another 22.9%, same as the 2014 increase. No, I’m being too easy. Let’s not muck around here. It’s the world stage we’re after. Those guys had thrown so much noise and so many predictions at the AFL, the press, the football public in February, they would’ve expected an increase in excess of 22.9%. The 54, 057 in 2015 should’ve been 65,000. This year, 2023, eight years later, it was 64,000.
2016-2019 - Flatline!
2016 - 53,743
2017 - 52,619
2018 - 54,836
2019 - 51,951
Four years of horizontal progress. There is no such thing of course. Four years that ended up below the tally they started from. These were the years that proved PAFC under Koch, with Cardone on the board, and with Hinkley as senior coach was a failure. I say again: proved. Right in the middle of those four years came the 2017 debacle, with Hinkley Hissy Fit II having him walk out, heading for the Gold Coast. It worked again. Koch chased him down in a performance that still defies belief, and did again what he’d done in the pre-season of 2015. Hinkley, well in advance of any contract review or decision being due, had his existing contract extended even further … because he’d threatened to walk out. Imagine Big Bob being confronted with such juvenile delinquency. There would be a body floating face down in the Port River; make that two - Jordan would’ve been wearing concrete footwear as well, just to make sure the male Hinkley bloodline was terminated. Considering Hinkley’s reason for wanting to go, or appearing as if, was initiated by Koch’s pathetic unprecedented unpresidential behaviour, the entire episode is a ludicrous indictment of everything to do with the manner in which the PAFC is being run - from the top down to the ground … and into the ground.
2020 - 150th Anniversary vs Covid
This year needs no extra explanation. It sucked all round … except for securing MG as JMS. This was and still is a thrill. MG - our new iconic $1,000,000-plus per annum partner from China.
By the way, we reached the prelim - at home - and lost because we didn’t show up after three-quarter time.
2021 - Year of the Abomination
No extra explanation needed here, either, except for a complete explanation from Alberton. We reached the prelim - at home … and there it ended. Hinkley said: “I wouldn’t change a thing!” and disappeared out the door, wasn’t seen again for … how long?
2022
The year in which the W influences the membership tally for the first time. Take out the W quotient, and the flatline continues.
2023
See 2022. On-field comment not needed either. There is just one question: What difference would it have made if the ‘August’ decision to extend Hinkley for yet another two years was delayed until at least the third week of the finals? Would the decision have been different, in that case? If not, why not? Sorry, that’s three questions.
Summary
On the bar chart at the top of the post draw a straight line from the top of the 2012 bar to the top of the 2023 bar. It will show, across eleven years, an increase in number of 35,543, including the W factor. This averages an increase of 3,231 per year. Adjusted for inflation and coming off such a low base … that’s a flatline.
PAFC ranks 11th of eighteen AFL clubs as far as membership tally goes. Revenue, too. Eleventh. Now that sounds like Hinkley … and therefore it sounds like Koch. We seem to do eleven a helluva lot.
Issue though it is on its own, the flatlining of the actual PAFC AFL-audited fanbase hides a parallel, concurrent and tightly concealed issue … the revenue received by the club from its members via membership fees year by year. We all know, we all can feel, that the worth, the dollar value of each membership is decreasing annually as the tally flatlines. The club keeps this data under wraps for obvious reasons. They are embarrassed by this data. Koch is embarrassed by this data. Revelation might well prove to be the end of him and his enablers. Pigs might well fly. They will, one day.
There is something seriously wrong - morally if not criminally wrong - when a chairman rides roughshod over a board of directors for eleven years going into thirteen … picks and chooses his own board in the first place … drives out anybody who gives off offensive indications of questioning his continued occupation of the chair … and with every square foot of baldness he can muster, with every selfish TV-breakfast-annoyance act of avoidance he can pull, with every dingbat comment he can make on radio or to the press, blocks any qualified and / or well-known Port Adelaide person with any sort of competing profile from moving into one of the currently vacant seats in the board room.
Our chairman is someone around whom his own world revolves. It is an exceedingly small world. I hope like hell that he takes all of it with him when he goes. That’ll be easy. It won’t fill a pocket.
Graphic by RussellEbertHandball
2012
On 2 October 2012 David Koch was appointed chairman. Within a few days he was to inherit as senior coach Ken Hinkley whose appointment he had nothing to do with. He’d brought with him media co-conspirator and chairman-in-waiting Cos Cardone as senior director - despite the reality that Cardone’s day job was to report to arch-competitor Eddie McGuire. Koch took over an AFL-audited paid-up fanbase of 35,543. When quizzed, he announced that modern-day chairmen were comfortable working remotely using hi-tech communication means and conference mentality, therefore he would have no issues operating from Bungan Beach nearer to New Zealand than to Alberton. The comfort was all for him; he did not mention if he’d considered the discomfort of those at Alberton trying to work with him.
He also announced that he would be leaving the Football side of the club to the senior coach and the senior coach’s football people, whilst he got on with stuff that he had a less remote feel for, such as finances, especially increased partnership revenue and membership. He started with a bang - a show on the MCG such as Alberton had never seen: the announcement of Renault as major partner complete with bunting, whizzbangs, pole-dancers and Renault SUVs. He also set up two corporate think tanks, a sound idea by the sound of it, which he called his Eastern Advisory Boards, comprised of volunteer Port professionals based in Sydney and Melbourne. In another interview he announced that he would be targeting Port people who lived internationally and who were keen to contribute to David Koch’s new-fangled PAFC. His words carried across oceans, certainly as far as Hong Kong, where as it turned out his daughter Sam and his grandchildren were living.
2013
By season’s end the AFL-audited paid-up fanbase was 39,838 - an increase of 4,295 or a tad over 12%. On the field Hinkley did his job by making finals, then winning one, then losing the semi after being up by nearly four goals at halftime. He then changed a winning gameday strategy of all-out attack into “Look over yer shoulders, they’re gonna come at ya.” It was a blunder. He admitted as much off-season, something he never did again. Port Adelaide lost. On the ladder we finished fifth. Over in Hong Kong things had started happening. For grand final weekend, Russell Ebert brought Tom Jonas and Tom Logan to the Hong Kong Football Club for an AusKick clinic and a ceremony at which a reciprocal partnership agreement between PAFC and HKFC was exchanged. HKFC would be our base of operations, our launch pad out of the ex-British crown colony into China. The club’s objective was to secure one more Joint Major Sponsor or a partner who would increase club revenue by $1,000,000 per annum. We reckoned it would take up to five years to pull it off. In fact it was achieved in two and a half.
2014
This was the year we still talk about. It was the year, looking back, in which we set ourselves up for a fall. We didn’t realise it at the time; we were too busy congratulating ourselves, something Big Bob McLean, Fos Williams and Jack Cahill would never have allowed. Russ, the Great Man, didn’t allow it either. On his return visit to Hong Kong for grand final week he made his feelings known over dinner in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club with my wife and myself. “We had a chance to get into the Grand Final and win the flag,” said he, “and we blew it.” AFL-audited paid-up fanbase had risen to 48,968, an increase of 9,130 or 22.9% over 2013. “Everyone at Alberton is carrying on as if we won the premiership,” Russ went on. “Oh how close we came, they tell each other. Just one kick from a grand final, they tell each other. It’s bullshit.” He shook his head. “They’ve lost the plot.” He added something uncomplimentary and unrepeatable about the chairman whom he blamed for cheer-leading the puerile atmosphere that was pervading Alberton, then he looked at my wife (who is Chinese). “What d’you think of David Koch?” he asked her. She made a face and shook her head. “Nobody in Hong Kong has heard of him.”
Despite his promise to learn from his mistakes, Ken Hinkley repeated the error he made at halftime in the semi-final in 2013. We had been top of the ladder. We were 10 and 1. Then we were 11 and 2. We actually had daylight under us, and a wind beneath our wings. But Hinkley was getting worried. He was afraid of something. The dizzying heights atop the ladder were denying oxygen to his brain, not that it’s of a size to need much. He told the players: “Watch out. Things are gonna change. We are no longer the hunters … we are the hunted. They’re gonna come after us.” He didn’t say “look over your shoulders” this time. No, he tried something new, yet identical. We finished the home and away season out of the top four. We denied ourselves the double chance and two home finals that we had, at 11 and 2, in our grasp. It was starting to manifest itself that nothing with Hinkley is ever in our grasp. It’s always just out of reach. After the 2014 prelim he was already over the hill, just over it, where the slide downwards begins. He wouldn’t need much of a nudge to end up at the bottom.
Off-field, we were doing okay. A second JMS in the guise of EnergyAustralia had been signed up in the pre-season. It was the payoff for a coincidental (concerted?) approach directly to EA in Melbourne, and from Hong Kong where their head office is located. Someone (okay … I confess, it was me) had been in the ear of a main board director of EA’s parent China Light & Power, alias CLP Power (China Light & Power Power), who was also on the board of EnergyAustralia. KT, unaware of this, went to Melbourne and made an energetic sales pitch to a receptive audience … and the deal was closed in time to announce it at Adelaide Oval on Lunar New Year’s Day, end January 2014.
2015
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
The chairman’s pro bullshit, and the chairman’s lame brain -
Couldn’t put Humpty together again …
Not ever.
It was getting towards the end of February when I realised something was going awry. The Great Man’s condemnation, the Great Man’s expression on the Great Man’s face had stayed with me. I actually hadn’t said anything negative to Russ in response. I remained in the frame of mind to give Koch as much rope as he needed to either 1) take PAFC all the way to the world stage, and do so profitably, simultaneously take the PAFC brand into the top AFL echelon and elbow the likes of Collingwood aside, also take PAFC membership to 100,000 and the club to three more premierships in the next three years, and clear the club of its infamous debt … or 2) go hang himself from the cliff-top above Bungan Beach and dangle there burning in the morning sun as he cried out for help hoping someone in New Zealand would hear him.
The end of February 2015 was when I was invited by Richo, at PAFC expense, to fly down to Melbourne. He’d organised a lunch he felt was important to our next step into China from Hong Kong. I got upgraded to business; good omen, I thought to myself, mug that I am. At Adelaide Airport I met up with my (late) colleague Peter Phillips (we all miss him terribly) who was already Down Under on business, joined Richo and KT in the transit lounge, and boarded the flight to Melbourne, all four of us together. KT was wearing a serious expression. No, KT was looking worried. Why, I dared ask, was he flying to Melbourne? Was he joining us at lunch? Yes he was. But the real reason was his attendance at what he called a ‘Road Show’ being conducted in AFL House by David Koch and Cos Cardone, PAFC’s media storm troopers. PAFC’s battering rams. PAFC’s ticking time bombs.
Special guests in addition to AFL royalty would be such members of the press corps as Caro, Whateley, Smith, Robbo, Jake Niall et al. It would be a three-day extravaganza. Three … days. You heard me right. The theme of the presentation would be the Greatest Show On Earth - PAFC Pre-Match Entertainment 2015 version. It would put what they’d seen and loved in 2014 in the shade, our ticking time bombs assured one and all. Highlight of highlights would be, no, not playing INXS louder over the Tannoy, but INXS in the flesh. At the first home game the Farriss Brothers would be on stage on the hill at the Cathedral end belting out their act, with all of Australia watching and rocking along and thinking ‘Aren’t Port Adelaide the bee’s knees’ with Never Tear Us Apart as the rattle-the-Cathedral-windows. But it would be one of the brothers who tore himself apart in a boating accident, losing a guitar finger, so the highlight turned into a lowlight. Koch stepped up and out as replacement Main Event - on the grass, in the goalsquare, as the ball was bounced; it was the moment BigFooty turned on Koch and the crucifixion began. No rope needed.
KT in Melbourne that day had confessed to me, sotto voce: “I think we might be going over the top.”
By round 2 Koch and Cardone had taken over the club. All of it. Football included. The 2014 preliminary final had done it. They had seen enough. It went to their heads. In 2015 PAFC was not only going to win the flag, PAFC was going to the moon. And, forever after, all the children, when they became grandparents, would tell their grandchildren: “I was there that night. I saw it happen. I saw the Almighty David K and Chicken Cacciatori Cardone dressed as a cooked goose rise up into the night sky with the adoring PAFC population all on their shoulders … and fly all the way to the moon. Look up at it, you can see them up there - the Port Adelaide men in the moon! They got up there, now they can’t get back because like Donald Rumsfeld and his Yanks in Iraq they had no exit plan.”
This club coup brought in Michael Voss … and provided another spectacle, something else never seen before, or since. Ken Hinkley, arms crossed, hiding behind a glare hidden behind sunnies under a gum tree on the sidelines at Albury, as Richmond thrashed our players in the pre-season. Nicks was coach delegate. He coached two of the three pre-season games. Hinkley had quit in a fit of Hinkley pique. It was a put-on to make Koch and Cardone take notice, to make them realise he was still there. They hadn’t thought to keep Hinkley informed that a coup had taken place and … by the way … Voss was coming in off the set of ‘The Recruit’ (Cardone’s brainchild) to take over as much of the Football side of things as he could handle. Aren’t you lucky, Ken, you’ve got miracle workers like us to make your job easier? It never occurred to them that Hinkley might see things differently. They hadn’t noticed that there’s a cunning side to Hinkley triggered by paranoia, lack of self-confidence, mistrust, even neurosis. What we were seeing was the Hinkley self-defence Hissy Fit in action. It was a doozy. It got him in a flash of abject panic (to be repeated in 2017) an extension on his existing contract two years in advance of his existing contract coming up for review. Hinkley was already here for good. He was also here for bad. Good or bad, all he cared about was being here for the money. In the process, across eleven years, he would deny Koch and Cardone the opportunity to show the world how good they were at selecting a senior coach. They haven’t had to do that yet. That, too, is an eleven-year world record.
In 2015 the AFL-audited paid-up fanbase rose to 54,057. Despite the Koch-Cardone hoo-hah the increase over 2014 was an ordinary 10.4%. Despite the one kick from a grand final in 2014 the rise in number was only 5,089.
Considering the euphoria that infected Alberton in the 2014-2015 between-season period, Koch and Cardone should have been expecting an increase in membership for 2015 - ‘their’ year - of at least another 22.9%, same as the 2014 increase. No, I’m being too easy. Let’s not muck around here. It’s the world stage we’re after. Those guys had thrown so much noise and so many predictions at the AFL, the press, the football public in February, they would’ve expected an increase in excess of 22.9%. The 54, 057 in 2015 should’ve been 65,000. This year, 2023, eight years later, it was 64,000.
2016-2019 - Flatline!
2016 - 53,743
2017 - 52,619
2018 - 54,836
2019 - 51,951
Four years of horizontal progress. There is no such thing of course. Four years that ended up below the tally they started from. These were the years that proved PAFC under Koch, with Cardone on the board, and with Hinkley as senior coach was a failure. I say again: proved. Right in the middle of those four years came the 2017 debacle, with Hinkley Hissy Fit II having him walk out, heading for the Gold Coast. It worked again. Koch chased him down in a performance that still defies belief, and did again what he’d done in the pre-season of 2015. Hinkley, well in advance of any contract review or decision being due, had his existing contract extended even further … because he’d threatened to walk out. Imagine Big Bob being confronted with such juvenile delinquency. There would be a body floating face down in the Port River; make that two - Jordan would’ve been wearing concrete footwear as well, just to make sure the male Hinkley bloodline was terminated. Considering Hinkley’s reason for wanting to go, or appearing as if, was initiated by Koch’s pathetic unprecedented unpresidential behaviour, the entire episode is a ludicrous indictment of everything to do with the manner in which the PAFC is being run - from the top down to the ground … and into the ground.
2020 - 150th Anniversary vs Covid
This year needs no extra explanation. It sucked all round … except for securing MG as JMS. This was and still is a thrill. MG - our new iconic $1,000,000-plus per annum partner from China.
By the way, we reached the prelim - at home - and lost because we didn’t show up after three-quarter time.
2021 - Year of the Abomination
No extra explanation needed here, either, except for a complete explanation from Alberton. We reached the prelim - at home … and there it ended. Hinkley said: “I wouldn’t change a thing!” and disappeared out the door, wasn’t seen again for … how long?
2022
The year in which the W influences the membership tally for the first time. Take out the W quotient, and the flatline continues.
2023
See 2022. On-field comment not needed either. There is just one question: What difference would it have made if the ‘August’ decision to extend Hinkley for yet another two years was delayed until at least the third week of the finals? Would the decision have been different, in that case? If not, why not? Sorry, that’s three questions.
Summary
On the bar chart at the top of the post draw a straight line from the top of the 2012 bar to the top of the 2023 bar. It will show, across eleven years, an increase in number of 35,543, including the W factor. This averages an increase of 3,231 per year. Adjusted for inflation and coming off such a low base … that’s a flatline.
PAFC ranks 11th of eighteen AFL clubs as far as membership tally goes. Revenue, too. Eleventh. Now that sounds like Hinkley … and therefore it sounds like Koch. We seem to do eleven a helluva lot.
Issue though it is on its own, the flatlining of the actual PAFC AFL-audited fanbase hides a parallel, concurrent and tightly concealed issue … the revenue received by the club from its members via membership fees year by year. We all know, we all can feel, that the worth, the dollar value of each membership is decreasing annually as the tally flatlines. The club keeps this data under wraps for obvious reasons. They are embarrassed by this data. Koch is embarrassed by this data. Revelation might well prove to be the end of him and his enablers. Pigs might well fly. They will, one day.
There is something seriously wrong - morally if not criminally wrong - when a chairman rides roughshod over a board of directors for eleven years going into thirteen … picks and chooses his own board in the first place … drives out anybody who gives off offensive indications of questioning his continued occupation of the chair … and with every square foot of baldness he can muster, with every selfish TV-breakfast-annoyance act of avoidance he can pull, with every dingbat comment he can make on radio or to the press, blocks any qualified and / or well-known Port Adelaide person with any sort of competing profile from moving into one of the currently vacant seats in the board room.
Our chairman is someone around whom his own world revolves. It is an exceedingly small world. I hope like hell that he takes all of it with him when he goes. That’ll be easy. It won’t fill a pocket.
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TeeKray
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If Koch could sack you again I think he would.
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