Reflections: Goalkicking

This article was published on www.thebigtip.com.au on March 26, 2010

Now that’s out of the way, we can settle in for the real stuff.

Were Carlton good, or were Richmond just terrible?

Making big sweeping predictions about the season before round one is silly enough, making more predictions about the season based on the result of the round one game is almost as silly. For those who said Carlton will struggle to kick goals without Fevola, Carlton supporters can rightly point to the spread of goalkickers in response. This was just one game though. For a while there Carlton was directing every kick into the fifty to the leading Eddie Betts. The tall forwards were either making poor leads or being ignored, or both. Against good teams with decent defences, using Betts as the long option will be very dangerous. Think West Coast using Phillip Matera as their only leading forward a few years back. The most dominant forward apart from Betts was probably Setanta O’Hailpin. He was surprisingly useful, mainly because he doesn’t often lose his feet in marking contests and his opponent does. The fact that he was better than McGuane is a big problem for Richmond, as McGuane will have to pick up much better players than O’Hailpin throughout the year, and will probably not cope. The most unthreatening thing about O’Halpin is that he is a very ordinary kick for goal and so if he does take a surprising mark, he will usually kick a point. Which Fev rarely did.

Astounding it is that teams train for hours and hours throughout the pre-season but many players kick for goal with absolutely no system or routine. Daniel Jackson, one of Richmonds best players, had a set shot that he put no where near the goals. His lead up, kicking action and follow through were all pitiful. First gamer Nason put his into the man on the mark, inexcusable even for a nervous debutant. The excuse for these pitiful efforts is usually that the player is tired, or is a backman. Mitch Morton, Richmond’s best forward, put through a few nice set shots last night, but he spent all last year trying to find ways to play on so he could kick on the run. How does a midfielder feel putting it on Mitch’s chest knowing he doesn’t have the confidence or set routine to guarantee a goal from 30 out? Coaches, especially losing ones, often bemoan how their team was only a few missed opprtunities away from a win. How in reality they are only a few goals away from the competition leaders, even though they sit on the bottom of the ladder. But these same coaches oversee large numbers of professional players who can’t kick for goal and even worse have no set routine when taking a set shot. With players spending countless hours in weight rooms, steam rooms, ice baths, video analysis meetings, leadership meetings, respect and responsibility classes etc, all with the aim of winning games, how can players constantly kick points from easy set shots?

It’s a craft that really has not improved in the same way that all other skills in the AFL have, and coaches and players need to take responsibility. Richo, legend of the game and all round loveable nice guy, spent years desperately searching for a way to kick straight from 30 in front. He never found it. Fevola was born with it. And every time the Blues go down by a few goals this year they will probably try not to think of what difference an accurate goal kicker would have made.