Former #17 James Stewart

My understanding is there’s nothing to stop the players doing additional specialist training. Yesterday at the NM Vs Brisbane game, they showed a clip on the big screen from Ben Brown who said that twice a week post training or on his “day off” he’ll practice his goal kicking from the start of his routine. He’d take between 100-150 shots from 5 different points from varying distances. He’s a beautiful set shot for goal so there’s little surprise IMO that he puts so much work into it. I also believe that players like Brown, who was overlooked in 3 national drafts & 3 rookie drafts, work harder at their game given they’ve taken the hardest route to their AFL dream. What’s to stop our guys from doing something similar? Brown is methodical in his preparation and his routine. He explained every step of it and why it’s important, what’s going through his head and the focus as he heads towards goals. Brilliant.

In the past at our club, among the hardest workers were guys like Baguley and Hibberd and more recently Guelfi. It appears from the outside that it means a bit more to these mature age players who take a bit longer to get their chance on an AFL list.

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There you go, I always thought they were restricted to how many shots at goal they can take at training.

It seems North Melbourne don’t restrict their players. 100-150 shots per session is a lot but the benefits Brown & by extension the Kangaroos get from it make it worth it wouldn’t you say?

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Fucken oath. I seriously doubt our blokes do any sort of goal kicking practice

I’m fairly sure it was ‘around 100-150 shots per week’, not session.

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different teams will have different restrictions due to the sports science guys.
have heard that before to re restricting set shots cos it might “fatigue” them.

also remember hearing a fear years back ont he radio a geelong player got in trouble for being dehydrated too much.
turned out he had been surfing all day on his day off, and got in trouble.

Surely the players can get an extra massage or do an extra recovery session to combat this.

To be honest I’d would be pretty disappointing to hear if our forwards weren’t doing any extra goal kicking practice

Possibly correct, heard those numbers but wasn’t paying attention until after it had started. The work he put in was the pertinent point, the fact he worked on it on his day off shows how much it means to him. Most impressive IMO. On the results of our guys, it doesn’t appear our guys put that kind of work into a pretty important skill of the game.

I wonder if they’re also restricted to how many kicks they get on game day?

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He’s at an age where people say to drop him, and in other threads complain we aren’t developing any young players.

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Lloyd suggested last year Daniher should hire his own goal kicking coach.

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See, this is where we get to a grey area. Daniher can say “You want me to be the best, give me the relevant resources”. Essendon can say “we are paying you $600k a year, you need to make yourself better”

If Daniher finds himself a goal kicking coach is it:
a) out of his own pocket
b) if so, does it still go under the football department spending

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Interesting point on the cost of the goal kicking coach.

On the topic of practice, it doesn’t matter if you have 1000 practice shots at training. Unless your techniques are correct. From time, to steps, to movement to mindset. Unless that foundation is set it doesn’t matter. Get a fkn FT coach in there. Should not be even a question.

Think of it this way, who has turned into tiger woods from hitting a million balls at the driving range without a coach. No one.

Goal kicking is probably 20% technique and 80% in the mind. The mind thinks “Don’t miss, Don’t miss” We know these guys can kick, see Daniher…when doing field kicking nearly hits every target…he has no time to think about it

Make it simple, Lockett used to say, just kick it to someone or something in the crowd. I used this technique and had a pretty solid run. I think I remember the points I kicked in footy from set shots that’s how many I missed (Obviously at a lower level)

There is some much to kick to as well!

Whenever someone says “practice makes perfect”, slap them in the face and tell them “perfect practice makes perfect”

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If JoeDan were to hire a skills and kicking coach it would surely be a work related, tax deduction expense for him. However if it were to come out of the footy department’s budget wouldn’t that mean less spending for other projects?

Other players at other clubs we read are doing more so they can be a better player and help the team in their own time. How many of our blokes are also doing this? And; is it unreasonable to expect a player to do this?

What about when zaha pays for his own preseason altitude training malarkey, shirley that’s a similar thing.
Doesn’t come out of the footy dept’s budget

Club could say:
We won’t pay for a goal kicking coach, but we will pay $100,000 for the rights to goalkickingcoachname.com

Wasn’t the story that Lloydy wanted a sh*tload more money to keep doing the job, the club told him he was dreaming, so he put it on Joe to pay the difference?

Never heard that one, but if Lloyd did that, its a bit scummy.