EXTERNALLY, the general impression is Port Adelaide's season went from disaster (at 1-2, mind you) to seeming invincibility (at 12-2) on Monday, April 3 ... and with senior coach Ken Hinkley moving from the elevated box to the ground-level bench from round 4.

The team's match review that Monday - along with the heart-to-heart sessions that followed until Wednesday - after defeat in a home Showdown while wearing the club's traditional black-and-white bars must have been the greatest epiphany since three kings followed a star to Bethlehem.

Port Adelaide has been unbeaten in 11 matches ever since that those darkest eight days between losing to Collingwood by 71 points at the MCG and the derby by 31 at Adelaide Oval.

The 12-2 win-loss record at the bye is the best 14-game start to an AFL season by any Port Adelaide team since the club rose from the SANFL in 1997 (and overtakes the 11-3 count from 2002 and 2020, both seasons that ended with minor premiership status).

But the fundamental shift at Port Adelaide is not measured by the 74 steps from Hinkley's hot seat in the box to his new perch on the interchange bench. Nor does everything - absolutely everything - change at one review in the makeshift team meeting room at the RB Quinn Stand at Alberton Oval soon after April Fool's Day this year.

If there is that lone seminal moment that sets the Port Adelaide Football Club on a new, fruitful path to live up to its Chasing Greatness manifesto it comes after half-time of the round 5 clash with Carlton at the MCG on April 17 ... last year!

Port Adelaide did not crumble while staring at a 49-point deficit and 0-5 start to Season 2022, a year that failed to end in a finals appearance but - to borrow from NASA astronaut Jim Lovell in assessing the doomed Apollo 13 mission to the moon - became "a successful failure".

There was no over-reaction in the match committee nor in the board room.

There was reasoned change to deal with reality rather than perception.

From April 17, 2022, senior coach Hinkley has re-written a playbook to ensure it thrives on the varied strengths of his squad ... rather than be exposed by the absence of valued players cut down by injury or poor form or caught in the sin bin. Injuries are inevitable and the AFL tribunal is influencing team selection like never before.

Football chief Chris Davies has overseen a program at Alberton that - unlike in any other manifestation since the new dawn after the dark chapters of 2010-2012 - allows Port Adelaide to plan for a long dynasty (as demanded by the Chasing Greatness vision of an era of success) rather than just immediate survival with a top-10 ranking.

And list manager Jason Cripps has delivered by extraordinary trading the talented midfield needed to give Port Adelaide the foundation for long-term success.

Port Adelaide did not panic on April 17 last year. It did not have its destiny hijacked - not its vision clouded - on April 3 this year by the extraordinary reaction (or over-reaction) to a 1-2 start that has added "untenable" to the football dialogue.

And if it is all as simple as moving the senior coach from behind a glass shield in the grandstands to the traditional seat by the boundary prepare for every AFL coach to make the move ... This is a game of copycats after all.

Port Adelaide's mid-season review can easily focus on numbers - such as the defence not conceding triple figures during the 11-game winning streak after leaking 135 to Collingwood and 117 in Showdown LIII. Since that much-reviewed team review in the Bob McLean Room on Monday April 3, Port Adelaide has conceded on average 74 points to have a top-three defence alongside fellow pacesetters Melbourne and Collingwood.

Or - in a sport that now has as many statistics as baseball - how Port Adelaide ranks high for keeping the Sherrin in the forward half, is winning clearances with an above-average count (39.2 with the league average at 37.1), is defying the whistle that is called against Port Adelaide more often (average 21.8 times a match) than any other team (18.3 league average) ...

There can be the call on the best win from the first half of the season: The four-point win against Sydney with key defender Aliir Aliir's save on the goal-line at the SCG after the siren? The victory after the darkest hour of a Showdown defeat?

"We approached that game in the right way; we got an amazing result that helped to build some belief and confidence," says Davies. It certainly shows with all the energy the Port Adelaide players bring to their matches, home and away.

Worst loss? Only two to choose from - and while the defeat to Collingwood is coupled with the worst four-quarter performance of the season, the loss in Showdown LIII is harder to stomach because all that was built into the derby script with the club's traditions and that trademark jumper.

But it is all about what supposedly happened - or was said, both internally and externally - after that Showdown loss that defines Port Adelaide and the 11-game winning streak today.

More so when the pre-season - with losses to Fremantle and West Coast in Perth - was far from reassuring, even if Hinkley saw it differently.

But the assessment of Port Adelaide's rise from pretender to contender needs far more reality than the premise success has come from Hinkley leaving the box for the bench.

Try three key themes:

1. MIDFIELD. At the start of the season, Collingwood hero and media analyst Mick McGuane ranked Port Adelaide's midfield at No.10 of 18. Connor Rozee, Zak Butters, North Melbourne recruit Jason Horne-Francis, Brownlow Medallist Ollie Wines, Willem Drew and former captain Travis Boak on a wing have made that assessment seem the greatest under-evaluation of the year. And it must be noted this regenerated midfield started the winning streak without lead ruckman Scott Lycett who was "returned" to the SANFL to find form in his comeback after season-ending shoulder surgery (and post-surgery complications) in 2022.

2. DISPOSAL EFFICIENCY. Noticed how no-one any longer refers to "disposal efficiency" or a lack of it from the Port Adelaide players, in particular the defenders looking for than 45-degree kick from half-back to the centre corridor. Port Adelaide does not have the turnover burn while the ball can be so cleanly moved by the feet of All-Australian contender Dan Houston, Kane Farrell, the surprise packet Dylan Williams and Ryan Burton.

3. PRESSURE. Pressure, pressure, pressure. There are three phases of Australian football. You have possession, the opposition has the Sherrin or the ball is in dispute. More often than not, you will have the football for less time than it is with the opposition or on neutral terms combined. And this is when Port Adelaide does the most-meaningful work to define what it stands for. Defence - team defence - is all about how Port Adelaide behaves and thrives when it does not have the ball.

Sydney premiership coach John Longmire noted it best after watching the Port Adelaide players suffocate his team with pressure, pressure, pressure in round 14 last season at Adelaide Oval. "Their pressure was elite ... they put enormous pressure on us," Longmire said exactly one year ago.

For all that is admired - and highlighted - of the energy brought to the Port Adelaide game by the tearaway plays from clearances with Butters, Rozee and Horne-Francis, there is just as much to appreciate from the harassment, blocking, chasing, tackling, bumping, spoiling made by Port Adelaide players such as Sam Powell-Pepper to make opposition players suffocate in a game that thrives on time and space.

Port Adelaide did not change on April 8 when Ken Hinkley went to the bench at the SCG.

The transformation was underway after another dark hour at half-time of the away clash with Carlton when a 0-5 win-loss count could have destroyed more than just the 2022 campaign.

A football program - and vision - was reviewed without a public spotlight. There was change - in particular with the SANFL program carrying an emphasis on development for AFL success - that today is delivering more than just encouraging results.

It could become the moment that has Australian football - as noted in European and American football - finally accept teams should be judged on the depth and merit of their programs rather than where a senior coach sits or stands.

"If you scratch under the bonnet," says Davies, "from last year to this season, we have had a few changes ... "

Not just one. In general, as Hinkley demands of his players, Port Adelaide has stuck to task. 

ON REVIEW: Australian football today is challenged to ensure it remains in control of how its sport is played - rather than have (as other sports know) governments legislate on the rule book amid enormous challenges posed by the concussion agenda.

The bump was first threatened and the mantra became, "Tackle don't bump."

The tackle is now risky while every week there is at least one player cited by the match review officer for a "dangerous" tackle - and many more immediately punished by field umpires.

And the players are increasingly damned by match review officer Michael Christian or umpires if they do bump/tackle - and coaches (and acerbic fans) if they do not bump/tackle.

Again Sydney coach John Longmire claims the quotable quote of the week by his sharp observation: "We're asking a helluva lot from our players ... and it's very hard to outlaw accidents."