PORT ADELAIDE won an extraordinary 69 of 88 home-and-away games between March and September of 2001-2004. It "converted" this to one AFL grand final and one premiership.
In the same race for superiority, Brisbane won 64 home-and-away games in the same period and played in four consecutive grand finals and won three successive flags.
Port Adelaide was 5-6 in September; Brisbane, 11-2.
For the past decade the two grand rivals of this century - clubs that were significantly changed at the same time in 1996 to allow Port Adelaide's promotion from the SANFL - have dominated again ... in home-and-away football from March-September.
Combined, however, the two clubs have featured in just one national grand final (Brisbane last year) and there is no premiership. Each club has endured questions about delivering in September. Port Adelaide is 2-4 since 2019; Brisbane is 5-7.
The 2024 season has begun with positioning to the top-eight series to consume all for the next 26 weeks. And does the game really change - as is so often said - in September?
Port Adelaide's club captain during the 2004 premiership success, Matthew Primus, reflects on the journey from 2001-2004 noting: "Everyone asks what does it take to win a preliminary final ... and then a grand final?
"The answer is basic and boring ... everyone has to play their role.
"The best players rarely, very rarely, dominate a grand final. Even if they play to their high level, you still need the 'role players' to be at their level.
"Everyone has to be pushing in the right direction. When you get that, you can win a flag."
One only has to recall the great Gary Ablett senior kicking nine goals for Geelong in the 1989 VFL grand final and being awarded the Norm Smith Medal as best-afield ... but the Hawthorn players taking home premiership medals while Geelong coach Malcolm Blight lamenting how many of his "role players" failed to play their roles.
Port Adelaide, as Primus, recalls of the 2001-2004 era was "good but we were not great ... and we did have a bloody great team in our way for those years; one of the greatest teams of all-time in Brisbane."
Port Adelaide - and even Brisbane - today is forging a good record from March to September. Since 2020, Port Adelaide has a 58-26 win-loss record in home-and-away football with two notable preliminary final results.
"And the lessons from our time are still the same for the players of today," Primus says. "Everyone says Port Adelaide has to change something. It is doing a lot of things right. Everyone now needs to believe in each other. When they understand that, they can win a flag.
"I certainly hope they learn from the lessons of the past couple of years."
Newly installed mentor at Brisbane, Richmond premiership captain Trent Cotchin, will be saying the same in his new setting at the Gabba.
A new season has begun ... and the 18-team battle in the toughest competition in Australian sport ultimately will deliver just one winner for 2024.
"It is bloody hard to win an AFL premiership," says Primus with the scars of a grand campaign 20 years ago. "And it takes a fair bit to get everyone pushing in the right direction for that success."
