His tactical advantage eroded, his playing stocks thinning, and his defence in ruin, Ken Hinkley’s most significant challenge is now upon him. Make no mistake: the Power are at a real risk of meandering their way into the AFL’s cellar in 2016.

What the hell has happened at Port Adelaide? The ahead-of-schedule preliminary finalists of 2014 have coughed and spluttered their way to a 2-2 start to 2016, which hides all manner of problems under the hood. The wheels are on for now, but it may only be a matter of time until they’re off.

In a season where teams like St Kilda, Brisbane and Melbourne are able to give more-fancied opponents a run for their money, the poor play of the Power should be sending all sorts of warning signs to head coach Hinkley and the rest of his brains trust.

Indeed, the president isn’t too pleased with how his charges are charging.

I agree. A disgrace. Rest assured questions are being asked & answers demanded. Undermines a historic week. https://t.co/6yiRvjLlX6

— david koch (@kochie_online) April 17, 2016

The Power have been strikingly mediocre for more than 18 months now, and the question needs to be asked: is ‘strikingly mediocre’ the ceiling for this team in 2016? Or, is there a risk – maybe a small one but a risk nonetheless – that the Power slip into the stinky mire that is the bottom four?

Even if that’s an overreaction to four weeks of football, what once was unthinkable – many pundits had this team pushing for the top four in 2016 – just four short weeks ago is now most certainly in play. There are elements of their funk that are outside of Port Adelaide’s control, but many which are not. And that is why the risk is real.

Defensive desolation
There are few superlatives that can describe the defensive performance that Port Adelaide served up against Greater Western Sydney on Sunday. The Power allowed the Giants to enter their scoring zone 75 times, and allowed 41 scoring shots on those 75 entries. In both instances, it was the second-most that a side has conceded in the 36 games played so far in 2016.

The smart money was on the Giants in this game, because they do precisely what Port Adelaide don’t want you to do in attack: run hard, fast and in numbers. GWS have built a game plan based on the running abilities of their gun midfielders, and will challenge sides to go with them all season long – or at least until the soft-tissue injuries begin to bite around the back half of the season. When it works it is a sight to behold, and results in triple-digit scores.

This is the antithesis of what the Power are built to defend. Port Adelaide’s defensive scheme wants sides to be patient with the ball in hand, to try and cut through a finely woven zone with kicking and marking, hoping that a mistake can be punished swiftly with run-and-carry. The Power are geared to attack at all times, and it makes them vulnerable at all times.

What the Giants did to Port Adelaide is not a one off. So far this season, the Power’s Defensive Efficiency Rating (DER) stands at -20.2, ranked 16th in the league ahead of Fremantle (-22.1) and Brisbane (-35.3). That’s despite the Power playing Essendon and St Kilda as two of its first four opponents – at least Fremantle can say they’ve played the toughest slate of games in the year to date, and Brisbane can say they’re Brisbane.

The numbers don’t tell the full story here, though. Instead, I’ll default to colleague Cam Rose’s favourite descriptor: intensity. The Power’s defensive application is about as intense as a lukewarm shower on a warm summer’s day. There are many words: insipid is one, lazy is another. Diabolical is somewhat apt, too, but one could be accused of over-egging it a bit.

Rather than use those words, let’s use a worked example.

It’s NBA playoff time, so it’s as good a time as any to bring some Association Basketball into the frame. Watch the player with number 13 on his back in this short video.

That defence from James Harden though… #whatsdoing https://t.co/9VkJLVUAgx

— Dan Talintyre (@dantalintyre) December 1, 2015

That’s James Harden of the Houston Rockets, a player so dis-enamoured with the very notion of playing defence that there are entire Twitter networks dedicated to posting videos of his hilarious non-efforts. Port Adelaide are currently playing defence like a team full of James Hardens.

Need proof?

When you've gotta lay a tackle but that hair isn't going to fix itself. pic.twitter.com/zheXvqmd39

— Russell Jackson (@rustyjacko) April 17, 2016

Port Adelaide’s midfield and half back line is staffed with too many front-runners; guys that are happy to be on the end of a handball receive, but that are reticent to win the ball themselves. Players like Jasper Pittard, Jared Polec and Hamish Hartlett give the Power great drive once the ball is in their hands, but are showing little want for the contest.

It means an undermanned defensive unit, headed by the impressive but overworked Jack Hombsch this season, can’t keep up with the sheer weight of opportunity afforded to opposition forwards. Hinkley’s go-to play when things aren’t going his team’s way is to put Mr Fixit Justin Westhoff behind the play as a spare man, and it is telling that Westhoff has earned 60 per cent of his possessions in the defensive half of the ground – many of them in the last line of defence.

The Power do look more sound in defence with Westhoff behind the ball, but the decision has flow-on effects across the ground. Without Westhoff, the Power lack a genuine target that can run the wings when they look to exit their defensive 50, and by manufacturing the +1 behind the play, Hinkley either concedes that extra number to the opposition or encourages an extra man in attack.

But Port’s defensive prowess has never been a strength. When they were flying in 2013 and 2014, the Power conceded more than five inside-50 entries against less than the league average – second only to Hawthorn – and earned close to five more than the average for themselves. Their power was keeping the ball out of their zone, not stopping the opponent once they got in there. And now that this advantage has faded, teams are putting up points.

Middling midfield performances
To make matters worse, Port Adelaide’s rising midfield group seems to have plateaued in the opening month of the season.

That’s not true of the whole group. Robbie Gray is raining hellfire on opponents of all shapes and sizes, and in an era where team and individual play is becoming harder to delineate, was the clear difference between his side winning and losing in Round 1 to St Kilda.

Gray is putting up video-game numbers even peak-2015 Nat Fyfe didn’t reach: 30 disposals, 17 contested possessions, eight clearances, six inside-50 thrusts, and near-enough to two goals a game. He is a one-man offence, and would be responsible for a significant share of Port Adelaide’s scores.

Ollie Wines has also upped his rating, as could be expected of a player entering his fourth season in the league. He was already close to breaking into the six clearance/12 contested possessions per game club, and so far this year has kicked a goal a game. Wines has turned the ball over a bit, and has been less noticeable as a result of his team’s malaise, but he’s keeping things ticking over.

But otherwise, the midfield collective at Port Adelaide isn’t firing. Some of this could also be attributed to the stark decline in ruckman Matthew Lobbe’s effectiveness. After two years of very good play, Lobbe might have regressed towards his career-mean of B-plus-ness throughout 2015 and the first months of 2016.

At the peak of his power, Lobbe looked like a poor man’s Shane Mumford; an enforcer, helping his side bullock the ball out of packs. He was Mumford’d on the weekend, and has been soundly beaten on two other occasions this season.

For absent friends
Lobbe’s current mediocrity hurts Port Adelaide in so many ways, and there’s no way out of it. Paddy Ryder, the ruckman-cum-forward-cum-ruckman that the Power spent their top draft pick to obtain, is out for the year, along with small forward Angus Monfries. The duo are Port Adelaide’s second most and most experienced charges, respectively.

The third-most experienced Power player is Jay Schulz, who has been laid low by a back injury. Between these three, the Power have lost some 600 games of AFL IP, or around 20 per cent of their total experience.

It is like Hawthorn losing Shaun Burgoyne, Sam Mitchell and Luke Hodge – except Monfries, Ryder and Schulz aren’t as critical to Port’s strengths. However, they are super important to their abilities forward of the ball, an area of the ground where the Power have traditionally struggled with from an efficiency point of view. Without the dominant drive provided by their midfield, and combined with their current lax defensive prowess, the Power are feeling these absences acutely.

The absent trio are joined by Matthew White as long-term absentees, and defensive stalwart Alipate Carlile on Port Adelaide’s injury list. Fellow best-22ers Chad Wingard, Hamish Hartlett, Nathan Krakouer and Paul Stewart have also missed games this year with niggles of varying intensity. Port Adelaide’s depth is being tested unlike any time in Hinkley’s tenure, and the coach’s problems don’t end there.

You can have any game plan you want, as long as it is the only one we have
Ken Hinkley has been a magician for Port Adelaide since joining at the end of 2012, playing a central role in converting the team from basket case to top-eight finisher. His influence on his side is clear, particularly in the early years of his regime.

Hinkley crafted an attacking strategy that made the most of his list’s strengths – pace and endurance – and that broke the pressing defensive schemes that were all the rage in the early 2010s. That innovation saw his team rise ahead of schedule, and in many ways was the precursor to the attacking flair that we’re seeing many sides play with in 2016.

Tweaks to the Laws of the Game have helped in this regard, but the influence of Hinkley’s run-and-gun-at-all-costs style cannot be overstated.

But what can be overstated is the impact that Hinkley, or any head coach really, can have on a club’s more medium-term development. When Hinkley took over, the Power’s list was ranked 14th for experience and 16th for age – the latter ahead of just Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney, who joined the competition in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Port are now fifth for experience and tenth for age. Some of this increase has been driven by trading and other list management manoeuvres, but a lot of it is just natural progression.

Port Adelaide’s list is still young by league standards, and certainly by premiership standards. The players that are suiting up right now aren’t playing to their potential, and the coach wears some of the blame for that. But where the coach should wear the majority of the blame is on strategy and tactics.

It is unclear that Port Adelaide have a plan B, let alone a plan C or plan D. Everything is about attack, attack, attack. That works well when your opponent is set up to defend, defend, defend, but that is not the trend in 2016. The Power’s innovative modus operandi has become business as usual across the AFL – the tactical advantage they enjoyed has been swallowed up by the playbooks of the best coaches in the League.

The downside risk to Port Adelaide’s season is immense, and immediate. The Power host the smashmouth football of Geelong this week, before travelling to the MCG to face Richmond. From here, the prospect of a 2-4 record, which may very well see them in the bottom six, looks more likely than any other outcome, simply due to Port’s defensive struggles. From there, a momentary reprieve, before a steady diet of top-eight teams takes them through to their Round 13 bye.

What looked like a year where finals were possible, if not likely, has quickly turned.

This problem is compounded by the manner in which Port Adelaide’s list management team has gone about their business in recent years, rightly or wrongly. The Power dealt their way out of the first two rounds of the draft in 2014, the first round of 2015, and are out their second round pick (to Gold Coast) in 2016. The last three years of Port Adelaide’s drafting have yielded a total of 50 games played across ten national draft picks. This is a team going for the jugular now – or in the next couple of years, at least.

Hinkley has been huge for the Power, but his most important job is ahead: salvaging the Power’s 2016 season, and keeping this team on the path it embarked upon at the start of his tenure.

A second straight down-year might not look like a fatal outcome for most coaches, but for a club that offered so much promise just 12 short months ago, and for a club that has lost its tactical edge, it might just be so.