When Melbourne's Jayden Hunt launched a 70m torpedo to kick one of the best goals of the season in Darwin against Adelaide in Round 17, it brought back memories of Malcolm Blight and the great torpedoes from days of old.
In this era of risk minimisation and defensive focus, the torp has largely disappeared from the game. But is there a place for the old-fashioned torpedo either as a scoring weapon or an avenue to clear an 18-man zone that has compressed up the ground to lock the ball in the attacking half?
Conventional wisdom says no. Staff at several AFL clubs contacted by ESPN said the torpedo was not practiced in any structured way, nor was it considered in any ball movement plans.
The concept of kicking a torpedo over a zone is seen as very low percentage. But what if players mastered the torpedo to kick eight or nine out of 10 accurately 75m and beyond?
Former Brisbane Lion and Hawthorn player, and now Prokick Australia punting coach Nathan Chapman thinks it's possible. Chapman currently works with Australian punters in preparation to send them to U.S. college football and the NFL. He thinks with the right mechanics and focussed practice, AFL players could execute torpedoes consistently.
"Why don't they use a spiral in AFL more? Well it's probably because they see it being inconsistent and that's with a big juicy Sherrin," Chapman told ESPN. "The NFL ball is even more unforgiving in the sense that it's pointier and doesn't have as big a sweet spot.
"I've got 15 young 18-year-olds who probably kick bigger than any player in the AFL because they've learnt to be efficient and use their mechanics and work through the process.
"If you have seen them kick in person you would actually wonder why the torpedo doesn't come back into the AFL a bit more.
"These guys take one step and kick it 75-80m consistently with hang time. If they didn't have hang time they would probably get a little bit more length on it. You could kick over any zone in front of you and could change the game in certain situations."
The key is mechanics. Chapman outlined making changes requires a lot of one-on-one work that is difficult to do in the structured environment of clubland in the AFL.
"You might practice but are you practicing the right thing?" Chapman said.
"Our body has a habit of wanting to feel comfortable when we do our chosen kick. It wants to feel comfortable and it won't want to get itself into an awkward spot. So that's why we refer back to our muscle memory."
In a standard week at an AFL club, players do very little, if any, technical work on their kicking.
ESPN compared the specific goalkicking practice at AFL clubs to the technical training done in other elite codes earlier this year and discovered that elite goalkickers at two AFL clubs were having less than 45 shots a week, the majority of which was unsupervised and non-technical practice. Some players will experiment very briefly and haphazardly with torpedos during the 10-15 minute goalkicking or "free period" segments of training at the two main sessions in a week. But no player would kick more than five torpedos in a week.
Hunt's teammate Nathan Jones told RSN that Hunt does have a couple of torpedo shots at goal from long distance most training sessions.
"He practices that kick from both angles almost every session," Jones said.
"He definitely practices that kick. It was funny. When he marked it we thought, he might be able to kick it. He practices it."
Jones revealed Hunt was one of only a handful of guys who used that 15-minute post-session period to practice torpedoes and he reiterated that it was very unstructured. He said there was a place for it in the game.
"I think there's definitely a position for it in the game," Jones said.
"Even kicking them out from full back, if you can pull them off and gain that territory. I'm not too sure about set shots but in Hunt's case it's a Hail Mary and you've got to have a shot at it, and you can pull it off then I'm 100 per cent for it."
But Chapman's punters aren't mucking around for 15 minutes post training. They are doing six hours of spiral kicking practice a week and he estimates the punters are kicking anywhere between 70 and 120 balls each hour with a major focus on technique and mechanics to master efficiency and power.
"If you spend enough time kicking without taking any steps and just being balanced one foot eventually when you take two steps it feels like you've got a (cricket fast bowler's) run-up going," Chapman said.
"It feels like you've been running forever.
"Which is one of my points about AFL goalkicking. [With] long run-ups, the only thing that happens is ... you to get into more trouble.
"If we can teach an 18-year-old kid to kick 75m off one step accurately, then you see some guys have a 20m run up kicking from 45m and don't make the distance, you've got beg the question what's it all for?
"There's a method to madness and you've got to work through it and see the results before you become a believer."
Torpedos might seem like madness in the AFL. But Hunt's one-off barrel could make anyone believe it might have a use if practiced the right way.