The best manning-the-mark technique I can recall came from Steven Dodd back in the mid-2000s. When an opponent was lining up for a shot on goal, ol' Doddy would make a mental note of where the mark actually was, then make a deliberate show of stamping out a fake mark a few paces back. As the opponent got into his kicking action, by this stage a few paces in front of where he should actually have been, Doddy would charge forward over his fake mark and could often smother/deflect the ball, or at least frighten the buggery out of the kicker and affect his action. There was a run of games in one particular season where he would successfully do this at least once a game....but no-one ever really made a big deal of it at the time, and eventually he got trundled off to some Z-grade WAFL club and it hasn't really happened since.
I'm sure the fake-mark technique has been around a lot longer than that, but Doddy was the first one I ever noticed make an art out of it.
