AFL Gather Round 2025 LIVE updates: Power fans get the last laugh as Hawthorn’s epic comeback falls short in Gather Round finale​on April 13, 2025 at 1:19 pm

Power coach Ken Hinkley said he was checking the time left in the match, and acknowledged some trepidation in the coach’s box when the Hawks cut his side’s margin to 22 points. He was clearly looking at the clock.

“They’re a great team,” he said of the Hawks.

Speaking post-match, Hinkley said the Power’s dominant win was not related to the 2024 semi-final’s after the siren antics, which saw him rebuked and fined $20,000.

Asked if he’d been thinking about the incident in the lead-up to the game, Hinkley said: “We don’t need to go into that.”

Questioned again later, he said: “Last year, I’ve said enough around what happened, and I apologised – and I say it again.”

Instead, he said the Power’s intensity and focus was born out of a need to stay in top-eight contention after a rocky 1-3 start.

“I think we are capable of that type of powerful performance. And it takes a lot of things to go right, and it takes 23 people to buy in. I think that was ultimately what we were able to do tonight.”

In time, we will likely learn if Hawthorn’s first-half capitulation to a pumped-up Port Adelaide was an anomaly, just one of those nights in which the one team gets rolling and the other rolls over.

If this was out of character for Hawthorn – based on their consistency over the past 12 months – Port Adelaide’s frenzied opening hour, when they put the Hawks to the sword with a dozen goals to three, was on-brand.

Port, obliterated by Collingwood in round one at the MCG, has the capacity to turn it on, or turn it up.

We saw both the stupendous and the shaky Port within two hours in the heavily hyped final game of Gather Round.

The Hawks charged back from a 71-point deficit to close to within 22 points with eight minutes remaining – enough for the confident Hokballers to get up, unless Port replied.

Read the full analysis here.

Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell treated the game as educational for his group.

“We want to play in these big games, but we haven’t been quite able to work out how to perform at our best in every moment,” he said of his side’s loss.

Nothing surprised him about Port’s intensity. The Hawks tried to stop their momentum three minutes in the game.

Ultimately, the former Hawthorn skipper said his team was feeling torn after being smacked around in a redemption game gone wrong.

“There was a bit of riding on the game, and we would have loved to have played much better than that,” Mitchell said.

“They taught us a bit of a lesson tonight.”

But he doesn’t think the players were overawed by the occasion or distracted by outside factors – just that his team were outplayed on the field.

“We were ready for a game that threw at us exactly what we thought it would, and we just weren’t able to withstand it,” he said.

Jason Horne-Francis used memories of last year’s tense semi-final as motivation for tonight’s game.

The emotions boiled over a few times and the crowd certainly remembered the fallout of the 2024 final – but it played to Horne-Francis’ advantage.

“I think rivalries are so good to have,” he told Channel Seven post-game.

“It’s such a good rivalry … we couldn’t have rivalry against a better club.

“I think it is good for us – it gets us up and about for a game.”

Zak Butters spoke to Channel Seven post game, here’s how his interview unfolded.

What a win, [there were] nervous moments late in the fourth but [beating the] undefeated Hawks, that is fantastic…
It was a tough game, we knew that. It was a true Port Adelaide win, backs to the wall, everyone rolled their sleeves up.

Speaking on it, everybody knows how the season ended last year – the result is done. You have the points in the bank. Did you think about it pre-game?
We touched on it, it is more about us coming out and doing what we have done the last couple of times.

Last week you gave the Saints that four goals [advantage] and started at quarter-time, and a note coming in there was a big effort – away you kicked off from the opening bounce…
Last week, our performance was really strong and we took confidence and momentum from that, but we knew that [if] we start like that, it would be hard to come back from. We knew if we get a good, strong start [and] kept rolling it would be a good night.

Also speaking after the game, key forward Mitch Georgiades said the team had a focus on setting the tone early.

“I think last week that was really our focus – going through the first 10 minutes so we can just apply really good pressure, [and] bring a good contest,” he told Fox Footy.

Connor Rozee said Ken Hinkley, who is in his final season as Power coach and copped a $20,000 fine for his post-match antics in the 2024 semi-final, “cops a lot of flak … he doesn’t deserve”.

“He is the spearhead of our organisation, so he cops a fair bit,” Rozee told Channel Seven.

“We love him so much, and from where he has taken our club to where it is now, we will be forever indebted to him.”

Port have taken the honours in a fizzer. The Hawks were simply not ready for the pressure Port Adelaide applied, and wilted. They fought back to get within 22 points, which was to their credit, but they never really threatened. Connor Rozee was excellent in the first half off half-back as they hit back with a repeat of last year’s semi-final result.