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.”

Geelong, both town and club, was a much better fit. And the new coach Malcolm Blight suited his game and his temperament. Blight encouraged his players to attack – “you kick 20, we’ll kick 25,” was his mantra for many years. But he could be a brutal, impossible man.

One day, Blight had Hinkley secretly filmed for a quarter and vivisected him in front of the entire playing group for nearly half an hour, refusing to refer to him by name. “Look at what number 29 has done here,” he sneered. A few days later, Hinkley played the worst game of his career. “Well that didn’t go well Ken, did it son?” Blight said. “You go back and play the way you’ve always played.”

As a coach, like Blight at Geelong, Hinkley has been always prepared to attack, to take risks and crucially, to do it his way. The wild spirit of Blight still courses through his veins. His critics say that’s the problem. They say his teams play kamikaze footy, that they don’t defend, that they’re too brittle against the very best.

When Port Adelaide were dismantled by Brisbane just under six weeks ago, the atmosphere during and after the game was poisonous. It was a home game, a 20-year premiership reunion, a white-hot opponent, a truly dire performance and seemingly the end of the road for Hinkley.

We’ve heard that a bit this year. Not that long ago, many leading pundits were advocating for the removal of Luke Beveridge. Now the Power are the form team of the competition. The same, to a slightly lesser degree, applied to Chris Fagan and the Lions. When Hawthorn lost their first five games, some people said they were tanking, and that they’d drawn the wrong marbles at the draft. Now the Hawks are one of the most exciting teams in the competition.

When he choked up following the St Kilda win, Hinkley was accused of not controlling his emotions. If they’d lost that day, his supporters would have deserted like rats up a drainpipe. But he’s always believed in this Port team. He’s always been confident that they could address their shortcomings – particularly their deficiencies at ground level and in defence. And his players have always been good at rallying behind him.

Even a man as optimistic as Hinkley couldn’t have seen Saturday night coming. It doesn’t get much bigger than a kick after the siren in a Collingwood and Carlton game, but this was every bit as compelling and significant. “In the 400 times I’ve turned up to the footy, it’s probably as good as I’ve seen,” Hinkley said.

We know Sydney are often tardy out of the gates, but this was just ridiculous. Port had slammed on 11 goals before the visitors had registered a score. By that time, the Swans, who’d travelled to the Adelaide Oval a game clear on top and 28 percentage points ahead of (the then) second-placed Geelong, were a shell of a team. They’d been ambushed. Their vim, their swagger, and their aura were all gone. By the end of the game, they’d forfeited premiership favouritism, eight percentage points and, at the risk of sounding like a Footy Classified panellist, their DNA.

All the talk will now centre on whether they’re capable of winning this race. For teams in premiership contention, a loss or two at this time of year can be a good thing. But this wasn’t a typical loss. This was the type of game that leaves scars. In was there in the face of John Longmire, who was collared by Ben Dixon at half-time. In the coach’s box, Longmire can sometimes give the impression of a man on the verge of apoplexy. Out of the box, he couldn’t be calmer. He looked at Dixon, took a deep breath and attempted to process the last hour. “Terrible,” he said.

But Port and Hinkley deserve enormous credit. They smashed Sydney at the contest, in the air, and when the ball was bobbling. They sought the corridor at every opportunity (“the fast grass”, Hinkley calls it). They played scintillating football, personified by the fast feet of Jason Horne-Francis, the hyper-caffeinated energy of Zac Butters and the avian movement of Conor Rozee. But they also defended stoutly, and denied, clogged and crammed the ladder leaders. It was an astonishing performance, a reminder in this most unpredictable of seasons that momentum, belief and a healthy list are everything, and that Kipling’s advice of treating triumph and disaster as the same impostors holds true for all of us, AFL coaches included.