How a chat with Ken Hinkley turned Port Adelaide forward Todd Marshall into a goalkicking beast
Todd Marshall was worried he was about to be dropped. Then came a chat that turned the trajectory of the young forward’s career. DANIEL CHERNY reports.
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It was the meeting that the rest of the AFL might end up wishing never happened.
The day Port Adelaide unlocked the gate to Todd Marshall’s potential.
Let’s set the scene. It’s late March of 2022. The Power, a preliminary finalist in 2020 and 2021, are 0-2 and have just been belted by Hawthorn at Adelaide Oval. Spearhead Charlie Dixon is sidelined through injury and won’t return until the middle stages of the year.
Marshall, at 198cm, needs to step up. He’s a former first-round pick, 23, and has done his apprenticeship, showing glimpses, but unable to consistently be a goalkicking weapon for Port. Fifty-eight majors from 57 games to that point is not a record that has opposition sides quaking.
His tallies across the first two rounds of the season make for grim reading: eight disposals, four marks and one goal. Marshall knows he’s struggling, and even wonders if he’s about to be dropped.
“I was going into the season pretty confident,” Marshall recalls.
“I felt like I had my best pre-season. I completed the whole pre-season … [for] only the second time in my career, and I was going in injury free. I think the first couple of rounds were very poor for myself. I was just putting too much pressure on my performance. I didn’t really understand what the team needed from me.
“Early last year there was probably a week or so where I was a little bit worried [about my place in the team].”
Enter Port’s leaders, including coach Ken Hinkley.
“The week leading into the Showdown [round three] I just sat down with Kenny and last year my forwards coach was Nathan Bassett, and a few other players like Travis Boak and Robbie Gray and just sort of had a chat around what they expect from me,” Marshall remembers.
“I lowered my expectations. I felt like I needed to try to do everything, do everything in offence and help the team in defence. They made my role super clear and from there I understood what they needed and not to overplay it and play my natural instincts.”
The beast was unleashed.
The Friday night Showdown against Adelaide is not a night Power fans will generally wish to revisit. Losing a game after the siren to your arch rival via a goal kicked by a player who turned down your advances to join the enemy is about as cruel a plot as you could script.
But from the wreckage came the breakout performance of Marshall. He booted 5.0, setting him on the way to a season in which he would emerge as Port’s most potent tall forward, kicking 45.15 for the campaign and finishing sixth in the club’s best and fairest.
It turned out that what Marshall needed was clarity in his job.
“Early in my career I sort of played a fair bit of high forward and didn’t really have a clear role,” Marshall says.
“I think now just being established as that tall forward in the team, and having the trust from my teammates that I can perform that role, it gives me a lot of confidence and hopefully I can produce.
“My aerial contest has got a lot more reliable for the team. I built trust from my teammates to keep kicking me the ball.
“And I put a big emphasis on my goalkicking, my finishing to make sure I was always on top of that.”
That goalkicking would be the envy of most players around the league. But not so long ago it had been an Achilles heel.
“It was only 2020 when I was having a few troubles with my set shots. I sort of went back to the basics,” Marshall adds.
“I’ve got a pretty simple routine and a pretty repeatable routine.
“[Taking shots] after each [training] drill is the most important part, when you’re a little bit fatigued from the drill.
“And then post-training I probably spend 15 or so minutes at least having shots from all angles.
“I love using Tom Hawkins as an example. He know what his kick does, it goes left to right. And I’m starting to learn what my kick does from different distances. If it’s a 50-metre shot it goes left to right and if it’s a little bit shorter I can punch it a bit harder.”
So to 2023. With a recent history of performance comes expectation.
Dixon is back fit, but Hinkley has flagged some pinch-hitting ruck time for the veteran. Marshall still defers to his elder.
“Charlie’s still a massive presence out there for us and probably the main focal point. But I think with the players coming back, we’ve got Orazio [Fantasia] coming back and obviously picked up Junior [Rioli] and have a few more avenues to goal.
“It’s a bit less Charlie focused which will not only help him but help our team. I’m looking forward to having a whole year with that forward line and seeing what we can produce.
“It’s been a different sort of experience this year, coming off a decent year, and having a little bit more pressure on you to perform.
“I’m just a lot more clear on what the team needs from me, and what I can do for the team to help us perform better. I think my focus going into a season’s a lot more clear than it has been in the first few years of my career.
“In terms of Junior, watching him at West Coast, always thought he was that skilful half-forward, but some of the stuff he does at training, away from the ball and especially as a tall forward, you notice the little blocks and stuff on our opponents. He has a lot of footy smarts.”
For all Marshall achieves, he may not end up being the accomplished sporting Todd from his region. While Marshall was himself an excellent junior cricketer, he has been surpassed by friend Todd Murphy, from nearby Moama and now an Australian Test cricketer with a seven-wicket debut haul.
“Through my juniors I played cricket with his older brother Joel,” Marshall says.
“To see him play for Australia is amazing. I touched base with him, I think it was the day before he debuted and I don’t think he had any sort of inkling of what had happened.”
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