‘I do hear it’: Horne-Francis on the boos, leaving North and why he came home

It was late last Saturday night at the Adelaide Oval, long after the final siren and the waterlogged on-field embrace between player and coach and Ken Hinkley’s emotional line-in-the-sand media conference, that Jason Horne-Francis chose his moment.

As the Port Adelaide rooms emptied and the jubilation settled, the young footballer went to the coaches’ room and told Hinkley how much he appreciated him and his public gesture after the game.

“After that game I wanted to go and thank him for everything he said to me during the game and what he did after the game,” said Horne-Francis. “A lot of people saw him come up and speak to me and I’m glad people saw that. He’s like a dad to me and people saw that. This has been a rollercoaster year for me and for the club, but that was a very proud moment for me, and it made me happy.”

‘I’m just a bit confused about why Collingwood, Sydney and Bulldogs supporters … why they would boo me.’

Jason Horne-Francis

In an occasionally raw interview this week, Horne-Francis, 19, became emotional when he said he could not understand why he was being booed by opposition supporters and admitted that he had struggled to deal with it at times. “I don’t think many players like it when they get booed. I try not to take it in, but I do hear it. With all the pressure on the outside I can let it get into my head a little bit.

“I understand the North supporters’ side of it. I was a young kid and I made the courageous decision to come home, and they are understandably disappointed. I’m just a bit confused about why Collingwood, Sydney and Bulldogs supporters … why they would boo me.

“My dad always said to me he hoped I wouldn’t go No. 1 in the draft and me then being the 18-year-old was always like: ‘Yeah sure, Dad.’ But I’m seeing what he meant now.”

Teammate Travis Boak took Horne-Francis aside on Tuesday to see how he was coping. Several weeks earlier, after successive round two and three losses, the 19-year-old had been so low that his coach had become concerned about his mental wellbeing. Horne-Francis says now that his emotional slump was short-lived but that he had commented to his stepfather Fabian Francis – the man he calls Dad⁣ – that he felt like giving the game away.

Boak said: “I just wanted to check in with him and see how he is doing with it all. First and foremost, we’re all human beings and he’s only 19. He doesn’t like the booing and it’s completely understandable. None of us would.

“But my concern was about his footy and whether he was enjoying it and I was relieved to hear that he was. He gets so hard on himself when he doesn’t perform well and when he thinks he’s let us down. He wants to win so badly and that competitiveness is so good to have around. To have young players like him and Zac [Butters] and Connor [Rozee], it really excites me for the club.”

The booing has not sat well with North Melbourne president Sonja Hood, who described some opposition’s treatment of Horne-Francis as “mob bullying” and who sought advice from AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan after the Port Adelaide-Bulldogs game over what, if anything, she could do to remedy the situation.

“I’m baffled about it,” said Hood. “I don’t like it. I don’t understand where it comes from. I would expect when we play Port there will be booing, just like Fremantle supporters booed Darcy Tucker when we played the Dockers earlier this year.

“It comes from issues about Jason’s year here that have been well-documented and to be fair we probably didn’t provide the perfect environment last year. It was an unsettled year at the club. But in the end he got a good outcome and we got a good outcome.

“I’m very fond of Jason and I’m fond of his family. I feel for them. It’s this massive pile-on where we’re really trying to identify and target someone as a villain and he’s just not.”

McLachlan said this week: “I don’t believe it’s fair or appropriate or is the way we should treat any young players. I understand the tribalism and the debates between media commentators, but I don’t understand the treatment given our game always celebrates young talent whether it is Jason Horne-Francis or Nick Daicos or Will Ashcroft or Harry Sheezel.”

McLachlan witnessed the booing first-hand at the same Gather Round game at the Adelaide Oval. “Why are you booing him?” McLachlan asked the supporter seated in front of him. “The No.1 draft pick’s got to show loyalty,” was the reply.

Said Boak of Horne-Francis’s reputation during his year at the Kangaroos: “It is so far from who he actually is as a person it’s not funny. He faced some challenges last year being in Melbourne and away from home and now I just hope the general public get to see the person he really is.”

Horne-Francis agrees with the assessment of Hinkley and his football boss Chris Davies that he can be his own worst enemy at times due to the pressure he places upon himself. At the start of this interview, which took place on the new social club deck overlooking the Alberton ground, the coach sat down briefly and said that now Horne-Francis has achieved his ambition of playing in the AFL and was coming up against names he revered such as Nathan Fyfe, Dustin Martin and Marcus Bontempelli, he was trying too soon to measure himself by their standards.

While Hinkley angrily defended the “19-year-old kid” post-game last Saturday night with veiled references to the booing and some commentators, he has not held back from giving the player a clip when he needs one. Three-quarter-time against the Bulldogs was one of those occasions when the coach – to put it tactfully – reminded the player that he was not going to star in every performance but that he could still make a difference in the final stanza.

Said Horne-Francis: “I’ve been speaking a lot to Amanda [LeCouteur], the club psychologist, about letting things get to me and getting down on myself. Both Ken and Josh Carr have said to come to them any time during a game if I need to talk to them. Ken told me the other night that he knew I wasn’t having a big game, but I could have a big quarter.

“To be honest I was so happy we’d won, but I didn’t think I’d been anything special until Ken came up to me. And I didn’t realise he’d said anything at his press conference until someone told me and I had a listen and it meant a lot to me.”

Hinkley in turn told Horne-Francis he was proud of him, that he could have given up for the night but had instead pushed through his frustration and helped win the game for Port.

The decision of the coaching group reached after the Showdown, which has led to Hinkley coaching from the bench, has worked wonders for the young midfield group and specifically Horne-Francis, who has embraced the invitation to seek regular face-to-face feedback. Said Fabian Francis to Hinkley when family and club met shortly before the four-way trade was executed late last year: “You’re just what he needs.”

Picking through the debris of the 2022 Arden Street environment does not reflect well on the club nor Horne-Francis. The Kangaroos wanted the teenager to move in with a host family while the Horne-Francis camp insisted he live independently. He lived with Callum Coleman-Jones around the corner from Arden Street, but those living circumstances, too, proved unsettled.

As an 18-year-old who left behind an 18-month-old baby brother, missed his family and relied heavily upon his stepfather and whose advice punctuated his weekly football routine, Horne-Francis gained a reputation for not always adhering to the Kangaroos’ training standards and occasionally speaking out of turn to more experienced teammates.

Hood said she worried as early as mid-season that the club might lose him but for Port Adelaide the reality of regaining the former South Adelaide star who had spent a fortnight under Ken Hinkley’s tutelage in his pre-draft year only truly seemed real in the days leading up to the 2022 trade period.

Coach Alastair Clarkson had come to North in a blaze of fanfare but his coaching future briefly seemed in question following allegations of racism directed at him and other Hawthorn officials, which they have denied. For Horne-Francis, the further uncertainty after the Kangaroos’ annus horribilis proved the final straw.

Few former teammates, with whom he thought he had good relationships, contacted Horne-Francis when he left, which seems to have saddened him. He remains in touch only with Paul Curtis and Tarryn Thomas – with whom he shares manager Ben Williams – and while placed under the watchful eye of Boak when he came to Alberton has fitted in seamlessly with the younger players led by Butters and Rozee.

“I appreciate North Melbourne and everything they did for me,” he says now. “They drafted me, they took me in and I couldn’t thank them enough. But the support network I have here is so strong.

“I’m just glad to be home. It definitely feels more normal having friends and family around. Dad’s trying to come to my games a bit more and it’s good to be able to go home and have someone in my ear giving good advice.”

While Horne-Francis occasionally stays closer to the club with his long-term girlfriend, he has moved back into the family home in Adelaide’s outer south of mother Trish Gully and her husband Fabian Francis, along with the couple’s two children, three-year-old Fabian jnr and sister Phoebe, 11.

Jason, who has no relationship with his biological father, added his stepfather’s surname in his draft year. If his family background is complex so is the series of circumstances that have brought the No.1 draft pick – whom Hinkley implored his recruiters to bring to the club back in 2020 – along with Francis back to Port Adelaide.

Francis, a Port Magpies premiership player, had played a total 23 AFL games for Melbourne and the Brisbane Bears before his 86 games for Port Adelaide’s AFL side. He left Alberton in acrimony after the Power’s straight-sets exit from the 2001 finals. Those in the vicinity after Port’s three-point loss to Hawthorn in a semi-final still recall the tongue-lashing Mark Williams unleashed upon his players. Francis’ defensive efforts were one source of the club’s disappointment.

A salary-cap bungle prevented his move to Fremantle the following year and then a knee injury in the West Australian Football League ended his playing career. Horne-Francis, who was raised by his mother Trish, credits the entry of Francis into his life when he was a seven or eight-year-old as a key turning point for the better.

In 2012, shortly after the birth of Horne-Francis’ younger sister, Francis was sentenced to four years’ jail with a non-parole period of 15 months after being found guilty of eight charges related to his former wife Debra Buckskin, including two counts of assault and threatening to harm. He was acquitted of a further 12 charges. The reports at the time describe Trish weeping in the courtroom as Francis’ sentence was delivered.

Port Adelaide actively campaign against family violence in their Power to End Violence Against Women program aimed at educating year 10 boys to respect women by challenging entrenched attitudes which lead to gender-based violence. The club has watchfully navigated this awkward situation by respecting the teenaged Horne-Francis’ strong reliance upon his stepfather, along with Francis’ club history. To date, they have welcomed him back to Alberton. Francis stood alongside a plethora of equally shattered parents and players and staff after the round-three Showdown loss.

I do put a lot of pressure on myself. It’s hard for me and I probably make it harder because I want to be the best player in the competition or at least the best player I can be.

Jason Horne-Francis

“To lose that game was heartbreaking,” said Horne-Francis. “I saw Dad in the rooms and he was heartbroken as well. I do put a lot of pressure on myself. It’s hard for me and I probably make it harder because I want to be the best player in the competition or at least the best player I can be and I realise that’s not going to happen just like that.

“Ever since I was young all I wanted to be was an AFL footy player. I want to make Mum proud of me. She gave me so much. Both Mum and Dad have given up so much to help me and I don’t want to let them down.

“And Port has just been so welcoming. I’m just really fixed now on helping to get this team where I think we can be.”

The thick scars on the back of both knees demonstrate a full stop to the pain the young footballer experienced for much of last year.

In October, scans organised by Port found that Horne-Francis’ abnormally large calf muscles were preventing blood flow from his knees and subsequent surgery on both legs meant that he was prevented from running until shortly before Christmas.

Now pain-free, Horne-Francis posed for photographs with a group of teenagers on school holidays towards the end of the interview and said that any remaining mental scars would heal too.

Asked if he had any regrets after the events of the past year he said: “I wouldn’t change a thing. AFL footy is probably not what I expected it to be as a young kid, but I think everything that has happened will hold me in good stead for anything I come up against in the future.”

Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.