The AFL’s decision to put fierce foes Port Adelaide and Adelaide in the same hotel hub makes little sense, Power coach Ken Hinkley says.

The South Australian clubs will both be housed at the Mercure Gold Coast Resort for at least seven weeks as the AFL resumes competition on June 11.

“We are arch enemies … it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put them together,” Hinkley told reporters on Monday.

“We have these great matches, these great grudge matches, and we’re going to go into a place and be all buddies?

“I’m not sure about that. It just doesn’t quite feel right in Adelaide.”

Port and the Crows will depart for the Gold Coast on Sunday, ahead of clearance to resume full contact training next Monday.

“Hopefully we’re not there for any longer than the six or seven weeks but we don’t know that,” Hinkley said.

“We can deal with it for a bit but there’s a tipping point.”

Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks, in his first season at the helm of the Crows, had no problem with being housed with Port.

“We cross the white line, then she’s on,” Nicks, a former Port assistant coach, said on Monday.

“But I know a lot of our (SA) guys, they know each other really well.

“Sharing a hotel with Port Adelaide, I have no issue. I know a lot of them well.

“(If) we play at that netural venue … well, different story.”

SA health protocols bar contact training until June 8 – three days before the AFL season restarts – meaning both Port and the Crows were effectively forced into a Gold Coast hub.

Hinkley suggested the protocol went too far in SA, which has no coronavirus cases.

“We’re getting tested twice a week but I’m looking at the community thinking ‘everyone else is having to live a pretty reasonable life’,” he said.

“We’re probably being shut down a little bit too far as far as what we can and can’t do.”

SA health authorities rejected appeals from the AFL clubs for exemptions which would have allowed contact training.

“We could potentially be here for another three weeks, wouldn’t that be fantastic, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to get that,” Hinkley said.

“I’m seeing a fair bit of community contact going on out there when I go to the supermarket … when I drive down the road.

“There’s a standard that we’re applying to the football clubs in South Australia, we get it, we’re above the (community) level.

“We’re happy to live above the standard. We want to be community leaders.”