Port Adelaide has reportedly backflipped on a handshake agreement with assistant coach Josh Carr, who was preparing to replace head coach Ken Hinkley as soon as this season.
It comes after Port Adelaide’s dismal 79-point loss to Brisbane in round 15.
Hinkley was booed when he was flashed up on the big screen at Adelaide Oval, then again when he briefly appeared on the ground as he walked through to the changerooms at the end of the match.
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It has reignited conversations about Hinkley’s future, despite the coach still being contracted until the end of the 2025 season.
But journalist Caroline Wilson has declared the Power have reversed their original handshake agreement, that she first brought to light in April.
“The way it stands now, is that Josh Carr is no certainty to take over as coach,” Wilson said on Nine’s Footy Classified on Monday night.
“I said there was a handshake agreement. He hasn’t been told he’s got the job.”
Wilson also confirmed that the club will not axe Hinkley mid-season, but may bring his contract to an end a year early if finals are not reached in 2024.
“I don’t think that Ken is going to move mid-season, unless there was a series of disastrous losses like that one,” she said.
“My belief is, if it continues to not be great, Ken could well go at the end of the year.”
So what has changed for the Power?
“The club… will look at Josh Carr, but they will look outside the club as well and go to market (for a new coach),” Wilson said.
“I think the reality is that everyone has understood now that Ken might leave after he finishes his contract with a succession plan of Josh Carr.
“Doesn’t look like Ken’s going to make it into that succession plan and (he’ll) leave with a year and a half to go.”
Carr was reportedly told by key stakeholders at the Power not to apply for the previously vacant senior coaching job at Richmond, which was filled in the off-season by former Demons player, Adem Yze.
“It will be interesting, because he (Carr), didn’t go for the Richmond job, because he was told (by Port), ‘please hang around, we believe you’re going to be the coach of Port Adelaide’,” Wilson said.
“He doesn’t have a contract either.”
Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes declared he is worried if the club falsely sold Carr a dream that they now won’t fulfil.
“If he’s been told that and now they’re backing away from that … he’s moved his family from Western Australia again to come back (to South Australia), he’d be really disappointed, if he’s been told that (the agreement is off),” Cornes said.
Meantime, Cornes is concerned with the output from Hinkley’s playing group.
“It is looking that way (that it’s time for change),” he said.
“What I saw on Saturday at the Adelaide Oval, was alarming to me. I haven’t seen that consistently for that group and for Ken.
“Right now, you couldn’t say, as a coach, he’s maximising what he’s got.”
The Power still sit in eighth on the ladder with an 8-6 record after 15 rounds.
They face St Kilda at Marvel Stadium on Sunday.