A year ago, Todd Marshall seemed to have unlocked the long-chased secret to goalkicking. He had 16.6 (72 per cent accuracy) on the scoreboard from his first nine games last season.
Dan Houston could "calmly" score the match-winning goal against Essendon - under enormous pressure from outside 50 with a wet Sherrin and the siren echoing around the MCG.
Marshall was the perfect study of routine and technique. Some commentators would say "poetry in motion" watching his set-shot kicks at goal from every point of the goalfront. Houston conquered the challenge of fatigue and every mind trap under anxiety. He made the improbable become certain with his deliberate style.
Today, it is a very different theme - one that is as old as the game itself - that has defined Port Adelaide's season. It began with the club's record books being rewritten with the dubious note of the most behinds in an AFL game - 24 in victory against West Coast in the season-opener at Adelaide Oval.
And the 5.18 in Showdown LV last week is Port Adelaide's third poorest conversion rate in an AFL game (behind the 4.17 against Sydney at Football Park midway through that inaugural season in 1997 and 3.12 against Richmond also at Football Park in 2010).
This damaging conversion from a team that creates so many scoring opportunities is more frustrating considering the work that has been put into goalkicking at training to avert the torment that unfolded during the derby.
"The frustrating part is it is working so well in training," says Port Adelaide forwards coach Chad Cornes who has taken charge of a goalkicking program developed by "an absolute expert in the field".
"It just has not quite transferred to games ..."
Port Adelaide today has a score count of 101.113 from shots that have registered on the scoreboard this season. It is not a new theme at Alberton - or in the game itself. The accuracy rate of less than 50 per cent in Season 2024 matches the same weak spot exposed in 2020 and 2019.
And this theme is in line with the game's torment through the professional era that was expected to bring greater accuracy rates while players were honing their skills on a full-time basis and playing on manicured fields without the setbacks of mud and heavy, waterlogged footballs. Perhaps a day's work on the tools or in an office brought the old-era footballers to Tuesday and Thursday night training sessions ideally conditioned with fatigue.
In 1991, the formative years of the national competition, the conversion rate in the AFL was 52 per cent. By 2001, with every player in full-time training, the accuracy rate was marginally better at 54 per cent. In 2021, with every player having savoured the professional era from the moment he was drafted, the rate had slipped back to 53 per cent.
Be it stronger defensive systems putting players in more difficult scoring positions - or just proof that goalkicking is a battle above the shoulders - the chase for greater accuracy is proving tough to achieve.
Ask Chad Cornes.
"Obviously," he says, "the pressure of the moment in a game is a lot more than you can create at training. That is what we have to work on ... and we will because this is a program we truly believe in.
"We have not seen the results yet, but I am sure we will before the end of the season."
Year after year, the game's greatest goalkickers are consulted - or quizzed - on the one aspect of Australian football that has not shown a significant change across the eras: Accuracy on the scoreboard.
That each goalkicking legend offers a different theme as a solution emphasises how challenging it is to unlock the secret to accuracy at the goalfront. Is it technique - a physical test? Is it above the shoulders - a great mind challenge?
Brian Taylor kicked 527.289 in 140 senior games with Richmond and Collingwood and has personally tutored some of the AFL's best goalkickers. He speaks of goalkicking as an art rather than science with a "one style fits all" method to be passed around at training.
"It is not about taking on an orthodox way to kicking," Taylor says. "If it feels right, if it makes you feel confident, keep doing it."
But Taylor insists whatever routine a player settles on, his accuracy can only improve with more and more practise, particularly with fatigue setting in. This certainly has been the approach at Alberton this year.
"Golfers are hitting thousands of balls before and after their rounds. And that is where we get it wrong in football - not enough volume of practice," Taylor says of the general approach across the league.
"If you repeat a task often enough in training, you should establish a routine that holds up under pressure and duress.
"We are talking about a skill that in the AFL has a success rate of nearly 60 per cent. Not nine times out of 10 or 10 out of 10. There is no perfection. But you need to practise it to know your routine."
At Alberton, there has been much work on goalkicking this season. It just has not translated to game day.
"But we believe it will," says Cornes. "We will see the results before the end of the year."
