MICHAEL VOSS makes it four.
He follows the late Phil Walsh, Matthew Nicks and Alan Richardson.
Port Adelaide is the place to build a resume towards achieving a senior coaching role in the AFL.
As Port Adelaide football chief Chris Davies said on Thursday in congratulating Voss on his move to Carlton: "We are delighted that we have a football program that has enabled Michael to progress his career."
For four senior coaches to emerge from Alberton in six years is a major vote of confidence in the Port Adelaide football program almost a decade after it was the punching bag for every AFL critic.
Voss now at Carlton, Nicks in his second season at Adelaide and Richardson in his time at St Kilda (2014-2019) all would reflect on their time and significant roles at the Port Adelaide Football Club as critical grounding for their senior coaching responsibilities.
Walsh did the same in 2015 on moving to Adelaide where his stint as a senior coach was ended far too soon by his death during the season.
Voss. Nicks. Walsh. Richardson.
Their rise to the much-scrutinised 18 hot seats in Australian football is a tribute to their talents and ambition - and reaffirms how much has changed at Port Adelaide since the dark hours of 2012.
That was when no-one supposedly wanted to be part of an AFL club that was repeatedly described as a "basket case" - and Ken Hinkley emerged as the "right man standing" rather than the last man in the queue for the senior coaching job at Port Adelaide.
Voss now relives that agenda. He is like Hinkley in that Voss has waited a long time - eight years - to gain a senior job, in his case the second after five testing years at Brisbane (2009-2013). He will seek to prove he is the right man standing at Carlton after so many others - Alastair Clarkson, Ross Lyon, Brad Scott and Don Pyke - avoided a job that has horribly worked over some successful men such as Michael Malthouse and Denis Pagan.
Port Adelaide is back to the point of merit - and significance - that was built up during the rise to the breakthrough 2004 AFL premiership.
Mark Williams' program delivered four of his men to senior coaching roles at rival clubs - the late Dean Bailey at Melbourne, Clarkson at Hawthorn, Damien Hardwick at Richmond and Stuart Dew at Gold Coast. Walsh also worked under him and returned to Alberton to work alongside Hinkley after a stint at West Coast. There also are seven premierships in this roll call.
And there could be more to come with Adam Kingsley, currently an assistant coach at Richmond, seen as one of the more outstanding prospective senior coaches.
Voss leaves Alberton after seven years in a major role alongside Ken Hinkley. The man who scored a bad card at Brisbane - where he inherited a club that was drained after its dominance with a triple-premiership run from 2001-2003 - gets a second chance to prove his worth as a senior coach, initially with a three-year deal at Carlton.
Port Adelaide has had two of its assistant coaches leave Alberton this month - Voss to Carlton and 2004 premiership winner Jarrad Schofield to West Coast.
There is a long-planned restructure of the coaching panel to now unfold with Davies confident of the talent already in Port Adelaide's football department.
"We do have fantastic assistant coaches (including Nathan Bassett and Brett Montgomery) who can take on more responsibility. The challenge with that is to find the right spots for them," Davies said last week.
"We have people within our club (development coaches Chad Cornes, Trent Hentschel and Tyson Goldsack) who can take steps up. I am really confident in our coaching group - and that they can get better."
A football program that has developed a Brownlow Medallist (Ollie Wines), given an interstate recruit his first All-Australian blazer (Aliir Aliir) and revived a coaching career (Voss) is doing much right. It certainly is a different storyline to 2012.
