Port Adelaide are impostors no more as they smash Sydney’s aura of invincibility

Port Adelaide stunned ladder leaders Sydney with the first 11 goals to celebrate Ken Hinkley’s 400th AFL match as a coach or player in style. Photograph: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos/Getty Images

As one of the great footballers of the 21st century was being feted in his 400th game, another man quietly chalked up the same milestone as a player and coach. A few hundred days before Scott Pendlebury was born, Ken Hinkley played his first senior game for Fitzroy out at Waverley. But he hated living in Melbourne.

“I was a typical country boy from a big family who just needed to have people around to make me feel comfortable,” Hinkley told the Adelaide Advertiser in 2013. “That didn’t happen in Melbourne.”