Carr has forged deliberate path to coaching Port

But according to Port Adelaide, they're also about to find out he's one hell of a coach.

Carr will succeed Ken Hinkley next season.

It caps a deliberate path the 44-year-old has forged since retiring as an AFL player in 2010.

In their Wednesday media conference, sitting either side of Port president David Koch, Hinkley noted the similarities between master and apprentice.

Hinkley was 46 when he took over at Port 13 years ago, also as a first-time AFL senior coach. He, too, had built a solid coaching CV.

"He's done it absolutely the right way," Hinkley said of Carr's coaching development.

As a player at Port and Fremantle, Carr ended up in the AFL tribunal's rogues gallery: 16 charges; guilty 11 times.

It also surprised no one that he and Adelaide's Mark Ricciuto were key protagonists in the Ramsgate rumble, the day after a 2002 Showdown.

Carr was asked if he would seek out Melbourne's Simon Goodwin and Hawthorn's Sam Mitchell, two other contemporaries who became senior coaches through succession plans.

"From our playing days, they might not want to speak to me," Carr said with a grin.

But Carr also had an enviable 10-0 record in Showdowns - a massive badge of honour in SA football.

He played 207 senior games, including Port's 2004 grand final triumph.

After retirement, he was an assistant at Port before he took over as senior coach at North Adelaide in the SANFL.

The 2018 premiership was their first since 1991 and came despite controversy over the Roosters having an extra man on the field at a crucial stage of their preliminary final win.

After leaving North, he was an assistant at Fremantle then returned to Alberton. He withdrew his application for Richmond's senior coaching job in 2023, with Port making it clear he might one day be their man instead.

"There was no guarantee I was going to get the job at Richmond, either. Your name gets thrown up there as if you're one of the great coaches ... that might have turned me away," Carr said. 

Put all that together, and Carr comes across as a pragmatist, a winner and a tough bugger who understands what's coming.

"He's a Port Adelaide premiership player, he gets who we are, he's a bloke with great values aligned with us," Koch said. 

For his part, Carr felt "a bit of a villain" when he left Port to play for a few years at Fremantle.

But whenever he has come back to Alberton, he has felt the love. And he feels ready.

"Every time I've walked back into this football club, it feels real - it feels like me," he said.

"I won't take that lightly. I feel like I owe the club a lot. I'm honoured."

Finally, Carr the realist spoke about recent history and the road ahead.

"If I'm sitting here in another 13 years, I will be pretty happy with that," he said, referring to Hinkley's tenure at Port.