PORT ADELAIDE'S latest graduate from the 2004 AFL premiership class to senior coaching, Adam Kingsley, has carried a simple and repeatedly proven theme from Alberton to his playbook at Greater Western Sydney.
One of the four new or returning AFL coaches to feature and succeed in the opening round at the weekend, Kingsley recalls how Port Adelaide's most-successful coach - John Cahill - achieved consistent results in all circumstances.
"You have to be good in contest," Kingsley notes of the game that will win in March - and, more importantly, in finals during September. "It is playing a brand of Port Adelaide football back from the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
"John Cahill's game plan in our first ever meeting (with the inaugural Port Adelaide AFL squad late in 1996) was really simple to understand. It was - crack in and kick it long.
"That's the game. Ultimately, that is the game."
Simple. Effective. And built on the premise the players will take to the field to prove their endeavour means more than all the Xs and Os contrived for sophisticated playbooks in "modern football".
When Cahill meets any of his players from the 10 premiership reunions that dominate his calendar, the question of what drove his determined men to keep winning draws the response: "We were going to war." They were uncompromising. Such an attitude reflected in their play.
Such is most understandable from 1990 onwards. The "them versus us" mantra built to an advantage for Port Adelaide during the Fos Williams era went to another level while Cahill from 1990 led a team from a club everyone outside of Alberton wanted to pull down.
Hatred towards Port Adelaide for being successful turned to disdain for being ambitious - for wanting a place on the national stage with an AFL licence.
On Saturday, in Port Adelaide's rare season-opener at Adelaide Oval, attitude meant more than any crafty tactic devised for the emphatic win against the highly favoured Brisbane.
A selfish attitude - as noted with key forward Charlie Dixon's double 50-metre penalty for Daniel Rich - was costly during the second term.
A manic attitude to apply pressure - being "good at the contest" - produced a strong start and an even more convincing finish.
For much of the past two seasons, when so much has been made of Port Adelaide's barometer being contested football, the recurring challenge has been to "get a draw" at stoppage when the opposition is winning first touch at the critical clearances.
On Saturday, the Port Adelaide midfield - without the experience of former captain Travis Boak (fractured ribs) and with the enthusiasm of 2021 No.1 draftee Jason Horne-Francis - lived the spirit of John Cahill's proven football philosophy that translates to any era of Australian football.
They repeatedly rushed at Brisbane midfielders looking for space for that effective kick or handpass from clearance. They put up arms to block exit routes or to tap the ball to ground to create a new contest. They harassed their opponents - terrorised them, just as Ken Hinkley once famously said of his intent with Brownlow Medallist Lachie Neale. They put their bodies into the contest. They defined "pressure" in football.
They again appeared as the focussed footballers who drew the admiration of Sydney premiership coach John Longmire who said in defeat to Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval last year: "Their pressure was elite ... they put enormous pressure on us."
Such was the pressure applied by the Port Adelaide midfielders led by returning ruckman Scott Lycett and Brownlow Medallist Ollie Wines that Brisbane coach Chris Fagan could not find - as he and his staff had done in the previous five games against Port Adelaide - a game-winning tactic. Not even when he matched Port Adelaide with numbers at the contest.
Be it about "redemption" - as has been said of the agenda at Alberton this season - or just having a stomach full of repetitive losses to Brisbane, the attitude the Port Adelaide midfielders had for the contest on Saturday afternoon overwhelmed a team loaded with proven talent and is regarded as a genuine premiership favourite.
It also gave a definitive response to the questions posed by Melbourne-based critics Garry Lyon and David King who both felt the most to learn from the opening round would be in Port Adelaide's performance against Brisbane.
They have a clear-cut answer today ... even if they will, as they should, demand the Port Adelaide players prove they can consistently play such intense and well-focused football.
No-one should be surprised that such a relentless midfield unit should emerge when its master as the "line coach" is Josh Carr. So much of all that is remembered of Carr's 124 AFL games in two stints with Port Adelaide - and unbeaten run in 10 Showdowns - from 2000 to 2010 today lives on with a midfield that is physically intimidating and endlessly annoying to its opponents.
Just as Jack would demand, "hard at the ball, hard at the body", Carr's return to Alberton as an assistant coach is delivering a midfield that is harder to dismiss at the contest when it carries a blue-collar attitude and has that elite pressure manifest in ploys never captured in play books.
ON REVIEW: While every Port Adelaide fan was waiting for score review to confirm Lachie Jones did score a goal off the back of his foot at the southern goal on Saturday, former England international Alan Shearer vented his frustration with how technology has not been the magical answer for sport.
Shearer wrote on Twitter: "I've sat in the stand as a fan. I've sat in the studio as a pundit. I've watched in the pub tonight with my mates and you're getting it all wrong VAR. It's not what you told us."
He would have said the same of AFL score review that in the Jones' example could offer nothing conclusive to challenge or confirm the "soft call" from the goal umpire of a goal. Technology simply has not been applied appropriately for score review at Adelaide Oval or it simply is not good enough, full stop. It is not what everyone expected when the AFL gave us its equivalent of VAR from world football
