IT BEGAN on the Friday night last week when Adelaide kicked the first five goals of the game against Essendon and it was still happening late last Sunday afternoon as the Western Bulldogs strung together five unanswered goals in the third quarter against North Melbourne.

Last week's round was one of ebbs and flows and momentum shifts. On 12 occasions, a team hit enough of a purple patch to kick five goals or more in succession without the opposition kicking a goal.

Such sequences have happened on 133 occasions this season, an average of 7.8 times a round.

In round 11, one team in every game had such a sequence. Not surprisingly, all eight teams won.

Being unable to interrupt such sequences is never a good sign.

The conventional wisdom has always been that great teams have players who can stand up when the tide is turning against the group and manufacture a goal to halt the charge.

If you don't have players who can do that, then you won't win big games.

However, in five games last weekend, both sides had patches where they kicked five or more unanswered goals, charging at opponents that had established a lead.

You can imagine 10 match reviews at the start of last week beginning with the words: Do you want the good or the bad news?

Perhaps the game is changing and conventional wisdom might no longer apply. Now, no lead seems safe. No team immune.

Geelong coach Chris Scott said he remained nervous even if the Cats were 40 points up at three-quarter time. Anyone who has watched the game in recent years can understand why.

Richmond coach Damien Hardwick said the week before that the game now demands you have to take your opportunities.

He's not wrong.

The theories put forward by AFL coaches last weekend showed the variety of reasons why such bursts of unanswered goals happen.

The most obvious yet least common reason was the six-goal wind that sprung up in Cairns. Richmond kicked six goals (five unanswered) in the first quarter. Gold Coast kicked six in the second. That's a football tradition we can understand.

What is less easy to explain is when two teams playing under a roof, as St Kilda and West Coast were last Saturday night, go on unbroken scoring runs.

Saints coach Ross Lyon said it was impossible to dominate good opposition for four quarters. Eagles coach John Worsfold said that early on, his team could not get its hands on the ball. A few changes and all of a sudden, the game shifted.

The change was significant. After the Saints kicked the game's first seven goals, the Eagles kicked eight of the next nine (including an unbroken run of five).

The use of the forward press can have an impact. Winning the ball out of the centre can lead to dominance on the scoreboard, as numbers push forward until a score is achieved.

Fremantle looked to have the game won with six successive goals in the third quarter before the Sydney Swans stormed home with five unanswered goals in the last. 

The Swans began to win the ball out of the centre and lock it in. They did it five times. In the wet, it was a matter of how much time would expire before each goal was kicked.

Different defensive and midfield combinations are happening all the time, while the match-ups change as defenders mix and match. Get the combination wrong or suffer a couple of key injuries as the Crows (and Freo) did, and the game can quickly turn against a team.

Perhaps we need to change our thinking. Tempo football once referred to a team's ability to slow the game down and halt such charges. Now the phrase is probably more appropriate in relation to a team's intensity.

Collectively, teams can surge like middle distance runners, maintaining running power for a certain period of time. When those surges happen, goalscoring opportunities need to be taken. Kick straight, in other words.

It's a fast game. No lead is safe. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang and the game can change in an instant.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs

This story first appeared in the AFL Record