PREMIERSHIP coach Mark Williams determination to leave a legacy at Port Adelaide emerged from his first game as an AFL senior coach: He would not have his teams suffer the "white-shorts syndrome" of being a flaky team on the road.

The Hall of Fame mentor had Port Adelaide win on the road in his first match in control - at the Sydney Cricket Ground. On the next road trip, Port Adelaide won in Brisbane. He had Port Adelaide on track to play in its first AFL finals series in 1999 knowing no team can make the play-offs by simply relying on wins at home alone.

At the end of the 20th century, the AFL's toughest road trip - and quicksand for South Australian State teams historically - was Perth. Williams took great pride in his team repeatedly winning in the so-called "House of Pain" at the now-lost Subiaco Oval in Perth where Port Adelaide was dealing with the ghosts of South Australian football history, the empire known as West Coast under Michael Malthouse ... and the sold-out stands filled with a fervent crowd.

Under Williams, Port Adelaide scored its first AFL premiership points at the Docklands, Kardinia Park, Marrara Oval in Darwin, the SCG, the WACA Ground in Perth and at York Park in Launceston where the repeat wins against St Kilda prompted coach Grant Thomas to seek an end to his club transferring home games to Tasmania. Williams also achieved Port Adelaide's first win at the Gabba after the first two visits ended in draws.

Kardinia Park, today's noted "hoodoo ground" for all of Geelong's 17 AFL rivals, did not seem so confronting to the young, ambitious Port Adelaide players nurtured by Williams.

Port Adelaide lost its first visit to Kardinia Park under Williams' watch in 1999 by 32 points - a fair result considering home teams are said to hold a four-goal advantage and AFL statistics reveal Geelong has made this a 10-goal theme at Corio Bay.

The second trip under Williams' tutelage - round 5, 2001 - ended in a notable 46-point win. By comparison, the record of non-Victorian clubs at Kardinia Park is - Brisbane won on its first visit in 1987 with Williams wearing the No.2 jumper with the Bears during the 19-point win; West Coast on its second trip; Greater Western Sydney needed five journeys to Corio Bay; Adelaide on the seventh; Fremantle on the ninth; and Gold Coast is still waiting, having lost all eight.

"We had a 'dirty dozen mentality'," recalls Brownlow Medallist Brad Hardie of Brisbane's first blitz at Geelong in 1987 that opened with a six-goal first quarter. "There were four or five blokes going to Kardinia Park for the first time and had no mental scarring. We had a couple of former Geelong players who knew the landscape. And 'Choco', Phil Walsh, Mike Richardson, Jim Edmond and I had played with success at Kardinia Park ..."

The mind game noted by Hardie has more relevance than ever before when considering the challenge of winning at Kardinia Park.

Williams' first six games as the visiting coach at Kardinia Park - after achieving an extraordinary winning record (5-3) as a player with Collingwood and Brisbane - read with greater merit today. He is the only Port Adelaide coach to have achieved wins at Kardinia Park - two of them. The second is the most memorable.

Geelong had won 16 consecutive games at home leading up to the top-of-the-table clash at Kardinia Park on Sunday, August 26. Brownlow Medallist Gary Ablett's goal in the 29th minute completed the wipe out of Port Adelaide's best lead that was at 25 points when Brett Ebert scored a goal in the second minute of the last term.

And then came the "Boy's Annual" moment that will be Dom Cassisi's never-forgotten.

"I'd be getting the footage of that moment out to play to the Port Adelaide players now - just to reinforce what can be done," says Hall of Fame premiership coach Malcolm Blight who has sat in both the home and visiting box at Kardinia Park. "It is the moment that says, 'This is possible; we can win at Geelong'."

With 20 seconds to play, Peter Burgoyne - having out-danced his Geelong opponents on the boundary line at centre wing - loads the torpedo to the Port Adelaide goalfront (left of screen, as they say). Justin Westhoff spills the mark, recent Hall of Fame inductee Corey Enright collects and quickly handpasses to Geelong team-mate Henry Playfair who is tackled by Toby Thurstans. Pressure does indeed create diamonds. Cassisi runs onto the turnover to kick the winning goal with three seconds to play.

Travis Boak is the only survivor from that match, his 10th in AFL company.

Since that famous victory, Port Adelaide has returned to Kardinia Park eight times for no win. It is not alone with such a troubled record at Geelong's home - the ground that challenges even well-established Victorian rivals.

"It is above the shoulders," says acting Port Adelaide captain Ollie Wines. "More than anything, it is the psychological barrier of going to Geelong."

Sports psychologists argue there are two clear-cut challenges faced by sporting teams on the road - the home crowd and the need to find familiarity in a foreign place.
Melbourne this season tried to turn the road trip along the Princes Highway - all 75 kilometres - into a full-blown travel assignment. The team moved to Geelong on Wednesday, trained at Kardinia Park, played on the Thursday night ... and shot itself in the foot by kicking 8.15 in a 15-point loss.

Melbourne premiership coach Simon Goodwin explained the radical ploy saying: "We want to get used to the environment ...."

So do you play the ground or the noted opponent at Kardinia Park?

"You play both ... and the third element is the crowd," says Blight. "It is always noisy at Kardinia Park. It works against the visiting team - and is an enormous energy for the home team. It is phenomenal how that ground shakes. Imagine - as we have learned at Adelaide Oval - how that noise will reverberate around Kardinia Park when they finish the redevelopment to enclose the entire ground with grandstands."

The home team is well known as a tough opponent.

The home ground - adopted by the Geelong Football Club in 1941 after its traditional home at Corio Oval was taken for war needs - is better known as the last "hoodoo" ground in a national league of shared venues.

"Generally," says Blight, "if you are a visiting team in Melbourne, you are looking at the game being 60-40 in favour of the home team. But at Kardinia Park it works 95-5 for Geelong.

"And that plays on the minds of visiting teams. When I was with North Melbourne, we would catch the train to Geelong - and the attitude was, 'We've got to go to Geelong ...'.

"Everyone has to deal with the fact they have a losing record at Kardinia Park. You will - as Simon Goodwin did with Melbourne this year - try something different or unusual in your preparation. Where else in the AFL today will you work harder to win an away game?"

The distinctive difference in Kardinia Park's design is the "skinny" width - the narrowest ground in the AFL with the 112-metre territory across centre wings being 27 metres less than the MCG, 25 shorter than the Gabba, 24 less than the SCG, 16.5 on Docklands in west Melbourne, 15 less than Perth Stadium and 10 shorter than Adelaide Oval.
Technically, the switch play from one side of Kardinia Park to the other extreme is quicker - and there are more out-of-bounds kicks as players under pressure misjudge the width of the ground.

"So in 1998," recalls Blight, "we marked Football Park in the same skinny dimensions as Kardinia Park so that our players would be more aware of the space they would not have - and won that week against Geelong in Geelong. It didn't work out the same way next time ..."

But it is far more than the ground's unmatched dimensions that work to Geelong's favour.

"There is a very different atmosphere to Geelong," says Blight who coached Geelong from 1989-1994. "It is not a big capital city - Big Brother is up the road in Melbourne. It is a very different feel at Geelong, one that works to get the best out of the home team and the worst from the visitors.

"The locals sell-out the ground. They dominate the landscape. It is not just the size of the ground and the Geelong team that plays on Kardinia Park. You are also dealing with the home crowd - and that is to become a bigger influence with the ground's increased capacity when the redevelopment ends."

Kardinia means "sunrise" in the local Aboriginal language. In the darkest hours of the COVID pandemic, the legacy left by the Williams era - of overcoming the white-shorts syndrome - was well noted by Port Adelaide's extraordinary record away from Adelaide Oval.

"We have been good at facing those challenges head-on across the past two-three years with COVID forcing us to deal with travelling on the day of games, going to new places for games, hubs etcetera," says Wines. "So we embrace the challenge of going to Geelong ..."

Historically, Port Adelaide has a 121-3-152 win-draw-loss record when playing for AFL premiership points in Australia outside of Adelaide Oval.

State-by-state the record is -

QUEENSLAND: Gabba (9-2-13); Carrara (11-1); Cazaly at Cairns (1-0).

NSW: SCG (6-12); Showgrounds (1-1).

VICTORIA: MCG (24-1-30); Docklands (30-34); Kardinia Park (2-13); Princes Park (4-4); Waverley Park (1-4).

TASMANIA: York Park at Launceston (5-5); Bellerive Oval at Hobart (2-1).

WA: Perth Stadium (1-5); Subiaco Oval (15-15); WACA Ground (1-1).

NT: Marrara in Darwin (4-6); Traegar Park in Alice Springs (1-1).

ACT: Manuka Oval (1-5).