IF YOU are trying to understand how Josh Treacy became the best contested mark in the AFL, his perfect attendance record at the aerial "cult" he founded three-and-a-half years ago is a good starting point.

"I've never missed, and never will," the Fremantle star says about the early-morning marking sessions he started back in the 2023 pre-season with assistant coach Jaymie Graham, now known at the Dockers as the Pat Voss Academy.

Treacy, who will play his 100th game when the Dockers take on the Western Bulldogs on Friday night, has been rewarded for his dedication to early-morning extras, setting a club record for contested marks taken in his first 100 games (141), and ranking No.1 in the AFL among forwards for overall marks (120) this season.

The Voss Academy has played a big role, starting as some extra marking work with Graham early in the morning but growing now to include up to 15 players, who flick the lights on, rub the sleep out of their eyes, and hold each other accountable through cold, dark winter mornings.

"It's well and truly developed into a bit of a cult we've got at the moment with our big boys and our marking that we do once or twice a week, first thing in the morning," Treacy told AFL.com.au.

"(Backline coach) Jade Rawlings has had a lot to do with that as well since he's joined on and we've continued to grow the space and what we're trying to achieve out of it.

"It's half an hour of work we do a couple of times a week, and it ends with a bit of fun and a few laughs. But we get some great work in and plenty of reps and it's certainly showing up in a lot of the guys' games.

"We've got nearly 15 guys who come to our academy, big and small. Some guys have been doing it consistently for two or three years now, and some of us have been doing it for four years.

"There's some good stability within the group and some characters, which makes it a great morning as well."

One of those characters is Voss himself, who took on the naming rights and has helped drive attendance through his big personality. The only rules are that you need to be on time for the 7am start, attend consistently and have a good reason if you miss a session. 

Treacy hasn't needed a reason yet, having built 6am starts at the club into his weekly routine a long time ago.

Those who have seen the Voss Academy in action describe it like a sparring session in a boxing gym but for marking. Players take their turn to mark repeatedly under physical pressure from multiple opponents until they are spent and step aside for the next man up.  

It's high energy, full of encouragement, and has led to players including Voss (4.22 marks a game) and Jye Amiss (4.84) having career best seasons in the air, and by extension in front of goal.

Treacy has been the clear standout, however, with his contested marking inside 50, ability to push up to the wing and take crucial marks as an outlet player, and then most notably go into defence and take game-saving contested marks.

The 23-year-old is destined for his first All-Australian selection and will push his teammates in a competitive Doig Medal field after finishing a career-best third in the club champion award last year.

Over the past three seasons, Treacy has evolved from the young player who would ask around about the training habits of opposition key forwards to now being admired and studied himself by the game's star goalkickers because of his contested marking.

After averaging 5.0 marks a game last season, he put the competition on notice in round three this season with the best aerial performance of any forward in 2026, taking an equal career-high 12 marks in slippery conditions against Richmond.

While the ball was slipping through other players' hands in that game at Optus Stadium, Treacy marked everything that came his way, revealing later that training with wet and soapy footballs during the week had been part of his preparation.  

It was a performance that caught the attention of the football world, including rival contested marking specialists like Riley Thilthorpe.   

"I love the way he plays. I think he's an absolute gun, so I watch him when I'm not playing to see if I can pick up anything that he's doing," Thilthorpe told AFL.com.au earlier this season. 

"I try and watch a fair bit of footy and pick up leading patterns or different tricks that forwards might be using with body work, and I can't speak highly enough of Josh Treacy.

"I love the way he goes about it. The way he attacks the ball, he just digs in, has a real crack, and he's obviously got great hands."

The recipe behind Treacy's aerial game and his constant improvement is simple, according to his coaches. He works as hard as any player at Fremantle, makes commitments as a professional, like not drinking alcohol in-season, and has a lot of footballs kicked into his hands.

He has got fitter and stronger every year since some lightbulb moments and self-reflection early in his career, and has become a powerful athlete who can both outmuscle and outrun opponents, playing long minutes with short rotations off the ground.   

His ability to take contested marks at both ends of the ground makes him a rare key forward, with his match-saving intercept marks against Collingwood (2026) and North Melbourne (2025) among the most significant of his career.

"To get back and help support the backline, you can't really train for that. But it's an in-game situation where I've got full backing from everyone that if I feel like I can put my name on one, I can go and do that," Treacy said.

"The Collingwood one this year was personally [important] because I felt like I'd struggled to get in the game.

"But something I've been trying to work on is that you can struggle throughout a game and still have a moment to stand up and be important. I needed to hang on to that and thankfully did.

"The inside 50 marks are about timing and a nice run and jump, and I feel like I've got my craft well to do that. Then it's the same with an LDL (long down the line), or a kick in off a point.

"Sometimes they're the best ones, when we're under the pump and we just need to take the sting out of the game. If you can hang on to one up there on the wing, I feel like that's nearly the best one."

If you were to summarise what separates Treacy from other key forwards and makes him a great contested mark, it is simply his competitiveness and attack on the ball.

They have been consistent traits in the key forward's football since he was a kid, flying for marks in the schoolyard and then competing against men on the weekend in Cohuna in country Victoria.

Indeed, his approach to playing 'markers up' as a youngster mirrors the way he hits plays now as a 23-year-old.

"I certainly had a fair crack and would try and clean up a few as well along the way, that's for sure," Treacy said. 

"But then I didn't want to mark it because then you had to go and kick, so I had to find the balance between what I wanted to do.

"I'm not sure if it's just because I was bigger than everyone that I could tower over everyone and just take a mark, but I felt like I always played with the presence right from the beginning.

"The beauty of country footy is you get to fill in the older age groups at times as well and you're playing against older kids and men from a young age.

"I just relished the challenge of putting myself out there and getting involved in a game of footy. That just grew over the years, but it probably wasn't until I got into the system that I really focused in on what I needed to work on.

"The aerial presence has always been there."

Fremantle's recruiters saw the contested marking power that Treacy had as an underage player with Bendigo and can still remember the sound the ball made when it hit his hands.

Tracked by list manager David Walls through the pandemic in 2020, he landed at Fremantle as a bargain rookie pick at the end of that year and learnt from teammate Matt Taberner and then forwards coach David Hale in his first season in 2021.

It was the arrival of Graham in 2022, however, that helped accelerate his development, with the experienced assistant triggering a change in the young forward's approach to improvement.

"At that stage of my career, I thought the only thing I needed to work on was the stuff I struggled with," Treacy said.

"Because marking was a feature of my game early days, I thought that I didn't need to put any extra work in. But something we identified that clicked with me was that I can still continue to grow this as a proper strength of mine.

"'JG' was a really big driver of that and I had full faith in what he was coming in to do with our forward line, and with me personally."

There was a mark that Treacy took early in the third quarter against Port Adelaide a fortnight ago that would not have registered as anything special for most, but it caught the attention of Treacy's coaches in the box at Adelaide Oval.

The key forward led up to teammate Jordan Clark and took a simple chest mark inside 50 after getting separation on his opponent, going back to kick his second of three goals for the game.  

For a player who almost always marks in his hands, however, a chest mark for Treacy stands out. "I hadn't seen him take a chest mark. He marks everything in his hands, because he's just got so much confidence in them," one of his coaches said afterwards.

That confidence comes from "doing the reps" and having hundreds of footballs kicked into his hands each week at close range as a starting point. 

There will usually be two of those repetitive sessions a week, lasting around 30 minutes early in the morning, then more squeezed in before and after training. If there's an opportunity to have five high balls kicked in his direction during a break on the track, he'll take it.

There's more close-range marking at captain's run late in the week, and again pre-game, with Treacy's coaches unable to even estimate the sheer number of footballs that are kicked to the key forward each week.

Then there is the technical side of his contested marking, which involves training for body work, timing his run, "chopping his feet" to stay balanced, and being patient about when to jump at the football.

All of those elements are crucial and are worked on repeatedly to then complement the less technical side of Treacy's contested marking; his sheer competitiveness and strength.

Graham has been instrumental in the 195cm forward's aerial development, but backline coach Jade Rawlings has also added to Treacy's skillset significantly, despite looking after the club's defenders.

If he's not holding his marks in a game, there are a series of questions Treacy will ask himself before getting some in-game feedback from Rawlings, who arrived at Fremantle ahead of the 2025 season.

"It's more of a process I follow [if they're not sticking], like what positions am I getting myself into? How is my body work? Am I a little bit eager? Am I too slow? Should I have bodied here? Should I have just run and jump?" Treacy said.

"They're constant conversations I'm having mid-game with 'JG' and especially 'Twig' (Rawlings). I go to 'Twig' quite a lot in-game because he sees that part of my game really well, even though he coaches the backs.

"I'm always quick to tap him on the shoulder and he's a real settler for me. I feel like he's been a big part of evolving my game the last two years with some of the tips and tricks that he's brought in for me.

"In-game, I can usually pick up what I'm feeling with my technical stuff and what positions I'm getting into or what I can try, but he's always a good sounding board for me."

The tables have turned on Treacy since the 2024 pre-season, when he asked to train on captain Alex Pearce for the entire pre-season in an effort to "take down the big dog" of the backline and improve his own game in the process.

This year, it is young defenders Hugh Davies and Ollie Murphy who have latched onto Treacy and set about improving their own games by performing on one of the Dockers' key leaders.

It's been a rapid transformation, but Treacy's leadership is clear when he talks about the role he now plays in the emergence of young teammates who want to sharpen their own games against him. "I love and respect that about the younger guys and I thoroughly enjoy the challenge and being able to help them as well," he says.

A member of the leadership group since 2025, Treacy is among the players who set the standard at Fremantle with their preparation and commitment to their craft, with the Pat Voss Academy a perfect example.

Teammates have seen the impact that doing the work in the morning has had on Treacy's career and want to follow the No.35, growing the morning sessions into a big part of the week for Freo's talls.

For Treacy, they also play a role mentally, giving him the confidence needed going into games that he can continue performing at the elite standard he has set as the best contested mark in the AFL.   

"At this time of year, it's challenging," Treacy said.

"We've got to turn the lights on, you can't feel your fingers, your hands and your ears are cold, and you're rubbing a bit of sleep out of your eyes.

"It's still dark, but you get in and you see all the boys having a laugh and you know that we're getting the work done together.

"Then when you see guys thrive on game day, I think that's probably my biggest kick.

"As well as what I get out of it personally, to see how guys are when they first walk into what we do and then how they step up on game days, that puts a big smile on my face."