ATTACK is the best form of defence. And it is going to take a grand defence to stop Port Adelaide from rewriting the record books while spinning the tumblers on scoreboards across the nation.
Scores of 117 and 119 points against North Melbourne and Essendon in the opening two rounds of the 2021 AFL home-and-away season make Ken Hinkley's crew the sixth Port Adelaide squad to have better than a 100-point average.
It is a small sample, but the 118-point average marks the most-attacking Port Adelaide line-up in AFL company, rising above the club's AFL record of 108 points in 2001. The other 100-and-better seasons were in 2002 (105-point average), the premiership-winning 2004 and grand final year of 2007 (102) and 2014 (100).
The emphasis on attack was primed well before the AFL tinkered with its rule book to address its concern with the imbalance between defence and attack to enhance scoring. After Port Adelaide proved it could hold Richmond to just six goals but not outscore the defending AFL premier in last year's preliminary final at Adelaide Oval, there was a critical adjustment to the team's playbook during the late spring.
"We're approaching it a little bit differently; defence has taken a bit of a back seat," says Port Adelaide defence coach Brett Montgomery. "And we did this well before a man-on-the-mark stand rule or rotations being changed.
"We put an intense focus towards making sure our offence is good enough and well-drilled enough to challenge the best of defences. That's how we went about it (during the pre-season).
"As it turned out, the rules have taken care of that for teams anyway.
"(Before the rule changes) we were going to put a pretty heavy spotlight on our offence. We made sure we could get it as sharp as we could."
Even with the retirement of veteran utility Justin Westhoff at the end of last year, the answer has come to the question of how Port Adelaide's eagerness for more attacking power would not lead towards more reliance on All-Australian key forward Charlie Dixon.
Switching ruckmen Scott Lycett and Peter Ladhams, Todd Marshall and second-year forward Mitch Georgiades, who - on late notice on Saturday morning to replace Marshall (back) - matched Dixon with a career-high four goals against Essendon at Adelaide Oval.
"Opposition teams will be second guessing if they triple-team Charlie Dixon (now)," says Hinkley. "We've paid penalties for a sole focus (with Dixon), but we have found one, two, three other options."
From 62 inside-50s on Saturday came 18 goals from 29 scores and with nine goalscorers, headlined by Dixon and Georgiades.
The start - 5.1 on the board before Essendon responded - was an attacking-minded response to last week's sluggish opening against North Melbourne in the sauna-like conditions under the roof at the Docklands in east Melbourne.
The sorties to this new, multi-dimensional attack - that has gained the speed and flare of Orazio Fantasia from Essendon - are primed by new names in the midfield such as Willem Drew and the small man who stands up every giant challenge, Zak Butters.
Butters, Ollie Wines and Dan Houston combining for 18 inside-50s (six each), two goals and eight score assists underlines how Port Adelaide's high-octane attacking game is fired by more than six men in the forward-50 arc.
The power of this attacking game rises next weekend with the return of Connor Rozee for the Easter Saturday challenge against West Coast in Perth.
Six years have passed since Port Adelaide broke the 100-point barrier in three consecutive AFL matches. The club record in AFL company for most successive games with scores of 100 points or more is seven (Rounds 11-17 in 2007 with tallies of 102, 126, 112, 113, 153, 155 and 163 points) in 2007.
These records could all fall this year ...
