By far the most interesting segment on AFL360 this season (and probably on Fox Footy, the actual matches aside) is a short period on Wednesdays, where David King and Leigh Montagna discuss some of the trends they are seeing in the game.

This evening Montagna highlighted the importance of what he termed "the money kick" - the kick into the forward 50. In past seasons, the team that took more marks inside 50 than its opponent won the game around 75% of the time. So far in season 2021 that percentage is up over 95%. Only two teams have lost the inside 50 mark count and gone on to win the game.

In 2020, Sydney were ranked 13th on this measure but so far in 2021 we are first (by some margin, it was implied, though no data was provided to show how far ahead of other teams we are).

Montagna then went on to highlight the individual players who have the highest strike rate at finding a marking target with their kicks inside 50. The 5th ranked player is Paul Seedsman, who has found a target with 30% of his kicks inside 50. Then come Travis Boak (4th), David Mundy (3rd) and Adam Cerra (2nd). Cerra has found a target with just over 36% of his kicks inside 50.

And first place? Montagna challenged King, Robbo and Gerald to guess who it might be, but I wasn't surprised in the least when they named him. Errol. What is staggering is that he has found a target with over 47% of his kicks inside 50 so far. That's a pretty wide margin over the 2nd best player by any measure, but startling for a 4 gamer.

Now we just need him to recalibrate his next most important kick that's gone a bit wonky in the past fortnight.