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Scotty & Izzy LIVE on SN ExtraRevealed: How Hinkley won the Tassie job
Tom Morris • July 19th, 2026 8:00 pm
The Tasmania Devils liked Ken Hinkley from April last year.
They knew he was leaving Port Adelaide, and believed he would be a worthy part of the process.
Since Gather Round in 2025, the Devils and Hinkley remained in semi-regular contact.
Communications remained open, dialogue was ever-present.
The coach was keen to explore the role, and the club was eager to pair him against candidates John Longmire and Nathan Buckley.
But discussions didn't ramp up until earlier this year and then finally across the weekend.
Hinkley was working for SEN on Friday night in Sydney, flew back to Adelaide Saturday morning and covered the Port Adelaide v Western Bulldogs game on Saturday afternoon.
Longmire was away for much of the weekend, while Buckley had been focussed on his role at Geelong.
Then Hinkley was summoned, first to Melbourne and then to Hobart.
He jumped on a Virgin flight with Devils marketing boss Kathryn McCann, landing in Hobart ahead of schedule at 9.40am.
He was whisked away and presented to the four-person panel, with Alastair Lynch joining via phone hook-up from People's First Stadium before his work for Fox Footy commenced.
The presentation to the panel was Hinkley's first in-depth one, but he had been having consistent chats across the last two months with Devils officials to leap to favouritism in the race to be the club's inaugural coach.
The panel liked his authenticity, his direct nature, and how he never lost the players at Alberton.
It's understood Hinkley is keen to fulfil a fair portion of his media duties for the remainder of the year, and next year the plan is for him to dive deeper into the role.
But the four-year, fully-fledged coaching contract will not kick in until 2028 and expire at the end of 2031.
Longmire had said publicly and privately he was never fully in. He had as many questions to ask the Devils as they had for him, while Buckley's next coaching move is surely to succeed Chris Scott at Geelong, whenever that time comes.
Hinkley will now be charged with uniting the state, taking what he learned at Gold Coast in that club's formative years and at Port Adelaide across 297 games to make the AFL's 19th club as competitive as possible, as soon as possible.
He will get the chance to build out the footy department - which includes the hiring of a footy boss - and develop a strategy from scratch.
It's a legacy role, one which will probably define his standing in the game.
