I cannot believe how farcical set-shot goalkicking has become at AFL level. Here we are in 2014 and every AFL-listed player is a full-time footballer, yet set shot accuracy across the AFL competition is at an all-time low. Call me old-fashioned, but sports science has a lot to answer for on this trend. The fans shouldn‘t have to keep accepting these horrendous misses from their highly paid players.
Since 2008 inaccuracy has cost four grand final teams premiership glory. Poor kicking for goal cost Geelong in 2008, St Kilda in 2009, Hawthorn in 2012 and Fremantle last year. All four teams created enough chances to win the game, yet they choked in front of goal. It is soul-destroying just thinking about it.
What really frustrates me with the modern game is that a player could tell you his skinfolds, his speed over 20 metres, his 3km time-trial results, yet I never hear their goalkicking strike rate at training so we can judge that against how they are kicking in a game.
Players now have limited kicks during the week to avoid over-use injuries and to recover adequately from the previous game.
In my time any player who was serious about their goalkicking craft would look to have 80 to 100 shots a week. I felt like a part of me was missing on match day if I hadn‘t put in the work during the week due to injury or illness. In and around the standard team training sessions I always would have a 30-shot competition with seven or eight regulars on a Tuesday. Then I would meet Scott Lucas on our day off and have another 40 shots.
The pressure we would put on each other was enormous. It got to the point where I felt more pressure during those sessions than I did on match day.
I was also big on kicking under fatigue at training to match the game- day intensity. I would ask our forward line coach Mark Harvey to work me over physically with repetitive leads, contested marking, and repetitive sprints, and then take shots afterwards to replicate how I would be feeling in a game. This preparation, along with the repetition of the standard shots, had me and many of my teammates feeling extremely confident that we were going to kick a lot more than we missed come match day. Like anything, we had the belief because we had done the work. I don‘t believe players can say that now.
I am so frustrated that everything else seems to take precedence these days over good, old-fashioned goalkicking practice. Players have everything monitored to the minute, and that data tells them that extra goalkicking would be detrimental to their overall wellbeing. What a load of rubbish.
I can‘t recall seeing any teammate suffer an injury as a result of putting in the extras on their goalkicking. As a result, we just continue to accept mediocrity in this area.
The fitness gurus should earn their money by attuning players‘ bodies to be able to cope with the 80 controlled shots at goal a week. If that can‘t be done, take John Butcher, Joe Daniher, Travis Cloke, Nathan Fyfe and Dale Thomas, just to name a few, out of other components of training to allow them to work at the part of their game that continually lets them and their team down.
It angered me to read six weeks ago that, under a new training regime at Collingwood this year, Travis Cloke sought a guarantee from Nathan Buckley that he would allow him the adequate amount of shots that he requires at training, as he had felt that he never got that in previous years.How ridiculous is that?
I was never told at any stage of my career that I couldn‘t take the amount of shots that I felt I needed. It‘s time that today‘s players took a stand too, because some of them are not far off kicking themselves out of a career. Lindsay Thomas is the perfect example of how things can be turned around and John Butcher is at the crossroads now.
There is no doubting that players are covering more territory now and forwards are having to push higher up the ground to help defend, but that doesn‘t excuse just how bad things have become. Highly-skilled players are 20 metres out, directly in front and missing, yet every player has 30 seconds to settle themselves. So to me fatigue is a cop-out on most occasions. They just don‘t practise enough, and if they do they practise poorly. So most of the misses are due to a lack of preparation, technique and mental weakness.
In the competitive AFL environment this is one major area of the game that is still not taken seriously enough by clubs and players themselves. High-altitude camps are all the rage these days, yet wouldn‘t it be nice if a club invested all its energies into how it can kick at 70 per cent for goal instead of the competition average low of 60 per cent.
Hawthorn has taken the field-kicking game to heights not seen before, but it is yet to transfer into set- shot goalkicking with Buddy Franklin, David Hale and Luke Breust having poor accuracy conversions last season.
Collingwood has employed ex-Lion and Hawk Nathan Chapman as its kicking coach because it has ranked 17th for set-shot conversion over the past three years. Only Carlton has been worse, but unless some power is taken away from sports science and given back to the art of kicking for goal Chapman will find it difficult to see a shift in momentum.
Achieving a positive change in a player‘s routine can take months, so he will need time. The off-season is the ideal time to break down bad habits of any individual. The moment a player is under pressure in a match they will go back to what they have done previously if their routine hasn‘t been rehearsed hundreds of times at training.
A coach will never drag a player for missing a shot at goal, and nor they should because we all know the player didn‘t mean it, but wouldn‘t it be nice to know that every player had left no stone unturned on the training track.
Unfortunately, that couldn‘t be any further from the truth when it comes to the all-important skill of goalkicking.
1. Lloydy is obviously a closet blitzer.
2. Seems one of the greatest goalkickers of all time thinks JD's kicking is poor.
