Opinion Can't kick, can't play football

[tribey]

We're nearly 4 years into the current regime and have industry-worst skills.

Doesn't reflect well on anyone involved from talent identification upwards.

We're fixated on things like the gameplan as if it's a combination to a safe we only need to unlock and a premiership cup will just appear behind the heavy titanium door once the white smoke and dust clears, but the bulk of this group can't kick (field or for goal) and even the ones with good legs are prone to making shocking decisions or missing hittable targets.

This is a reality we had to address years ago, at the foundational rebuilding phase, similar to the Hawks when Clarko and Pelchen first arrived.

Even with a skills-intensive preseason, what are the odds of the significant improvement required magically appearing from the same old guys who've been butchering footies and clutch moments since they were juniors?

 

[proman_x]

Interesting article from K.C. Kicking is an issue as is disposal by hand from the games I have seen this year.

I would be curious to know what Kane's disposal % was over his journey?

 

[Nemisis]

Almost all defenders have high disposal efficiency no matter who they play for. Not sure why? Maybe they have more space to operate in? Most teams normally have a spare man in defense so easier to find a target?

Exactly - Ebert, Ollie, Dangerfield, Selwood play a game that will always result in a poor disposal efficiency.
Good, accurate kicking is essential to a successful team but I believe 'game style' has a lot to do with it.
ATM we kick to packs up forward, cant remember the last time we hit up a leading forward 40 metres from goal directly in front.

 

[Lord Flasheart]

I believe our foot skills, and decision making associated with them, have been a massive issue for a long time. This is a poor reflection on our recruiting philosophy, where clearly this skill is not weighted heavily enough when considering the range of factors in assessing a potential draftee. Not everyone can be taught how to kick, and there are many mechanical traits any person has which infuences their kicking action. Compared to the past where players with poor foot skills could still get by, the current speed and style of the game exposes any player who is suspect in this area. Boak, both Grays, Wines all get under the ball and are unable kick low and strong to a leading player. I tear my hair out every time i see a ball fly over a leading players head (poor Brett Ebert, how many leads did he make where the ball was kicked 4 feet over his head). Look at Hawthorn in the 90's, Dunstall took nearly every mark on his chest, often diving to the ground. If the club cannot see that this needs to be the biggest single factor when drafting hereonin,i despair our fortunes may not turn around in a hurry. Out, reliance on fitness, in, good footskills and decision making!

 

[ScooterBrother]

The thing with kicking and disposal efficiency that often gets missed is - confidence.

These guys are AFL players, most if not all can kick a football at a very elite level. I reckon if you got each AFL side to do an overall skills test, most would average out to be about the same. The execution on game day is more about decision making and an inherent knowledge about team mates and the game plan.

Daisy Pearce made a stunning observation about Hawthorn on AFL Gameday that only someone that hasn't been ingrained in the AFL media circles could have made. It went something like:

Hawthorn have amazing depth - but not because of the players skill, but rather the structure of the entire club and each player knowing their role to perfection.

For example - Port should know Brad Ebert is a straight kick, but has trouble gauging depth - so when he is deep in defence he needs be looking for an easy down the line hit up and never sideways. Players should all know that Boak has no left foot. Everyone should know that Neade kicks around the ball on his right. Young's kicks go left to right and very high et al

Combine the knowledge of individual traits with a game plan that is easily led, understandable and executable and it builds team continuity and confidence. When that happens the thinking is removed and players kick and move with instinct and in rhythm. Once that happens, all of a sudden players that can't kick or have poor skill, start executing and the confidence lifts again. Cue snowball.

 

[Us against the rest]

I have said it before here, learn to kick with both feet and handball with both hands.
How can you be a professional footballer and not be able to do this?
Bonner is going to be important for our future.
Krakouer, Pittard and Polec (+Dixon and Schulz in terms of goal scoring accuracy) are our other accurate mainstays in terms of kicking ability, although I think only Pittard is trying to develop a 2 sided capability.

Was watching Butcher a few weeks back and he has no problem hand balling and kicking on both sides.

 

[Us against the rest]

The thing with kicking and disposal efficiency that often gets missed is - confidence.

These guys are AFL players, most if not all can kick a football at a very elite level. I reckon if you got each AFL side to do an overall skills test, most would average out to be about the same. The execution on game day is more about decision making and an inherent knowledge about team mates and the game plan.

Daisy Pearce made a stunning observation about Hawthorn on AFL Gameday that only someone that hasn't been ingrained in the AFL media circles could have made. It went something like:

Hawthorn have amazing depth - but not because of the players skill, but rather the structure of the entire club and each player knowing their role to perfection.

For example - Port should know Brad Ebert is a straight kick, but has trouble gauging depth - so when he is deep in defence he needs be looking for an easy down the line hit up and never sideways. Players should all know that Boak has no left foot. Everyone should know that Neade kicks around the ball on his right. Young's kicks go left to right and very high et al

Combine the knowledge of individual traits with a game plan that is easily led, understandable and executable and it builds team continuity and confidence. When that happens the thinking is removed and players kick and move with instinct and in rhythm. Once that happens, all of a sudden players that can't kick or have poor skill, start executing and the confidence lifts again. Cue snowball.

Good post.

 

[Us against the rest]

We were poorly skilled in 2012 too and it's no coincidence that the players on this list still are.

These players were on our list in 2012 and currently still are.
2012 to current
Westhoff
Ah Chee
Carlile
O'Shea
Pittard
Lobbe
Jonas
Broadbent
Trengove
Wingard
Schulz
Butcher
Stewart
Ebert
Hartlett
Boak
Young
R Gray
Hombsch

 

[SureBuddy]

Manipulating the data at http://www.afl.com.au/stats

Top 10 by totals - 1st Ollie 60, 3st Ebo 57
View attachment 259093


Top 10 by average per game 2nd Ollie 4.6, 3rd Gray 4.5, 5th Ebo 4.4
View attachment 259095

I get that it is not a good look... But Geelong have Danger, Duncan and Selwood all in the top 10 and they are sitting top of the ladder. It is not a nice stat, but not as damning as you are making it out to be. A lot of inside mids have high clanger counts.

 

[shewho]

In 2015 our pre season emphasis was on kicking. Extra time on it backfired. Conclusion is that we are not Hawthorn.

One reason is we take risks. You watch Hawthorn. They take the easy pass 90% of the time. A slow build up doesn't bother them. Essentially this was the game plan Chocko liked. Treating footy like soccer and basketball as a possession game.

Hinkley tries high risk high reward footy. Players are constantly encouraged to make the kick that slices through the opposition. We often ignore the safe 20 meter option in favour of the longer risky kick.

There is no one way to play footy. I'd like to know the disposal efficiency stats for our last prelim with Hawthorn. We almost won but I suspect they killed us for DE. Likewise when we beat them twice last year.

Sure if we were making more kicks we would be winning more games. But comparing our DE to Hawthorn's, or our clangers to other teams without recognising we play different styles is a fruitless exercise.

 

[raptalia]

It is one thing to talk of kicking efficiency but when an experienced player like Westhoff has one kick in a half of football his efficiency does not matter. My point is you have to get the bloody agate to make efficiency count and we have too many players who are not getting the ball often enough and when they do get it they do not make the opposition pay.

On the subject of kicking, the slow mo of Dixon's ball drop when he 'butchered' a sitter in the second looked suspiciously like that of another player on our list. In fact it was almost identical !!!! Charlie dropped the ball from above navel height and lent back as he kicked with a disastrous result. I hope Dixon looks at that footage and rectifies the fault.

 

[Macca19]

Of those in the top 10 in the clanger stat, 3 are probably in the AA team (Greene, Danger, Shaw), another two probably leading the club BnF (Viney, Robinson), so it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[x_les_x]

Not suprised not going to do the wholelist but our so called elite kickers are limited

long but not short kicks: hartlett, Broadbent, Neade, westhoff
Polec: dinky little 15-20m kicks then run off
Go to shit under pressure: colquhoun Toumpas, jonas
Sprayers/clanger kings/chuck it on the boot without looking: palmer, mitchell, impey, butcher, ebert, wines, p stewart, o Shea, s gray, ah chee, Trengove, lobbe, johnson supposedly?, jonas

The rest are questionable

The only consistently good kicks in our team are boak (injury free), white, krak, wingard dixon?, schulz, pittard, byrne jones, amon, bonner suppsedly?

Thats 8/44 if we cant consistently hit targets at the most elite level of our sport and we have around 13 players on our list who cant kick for shit no wonder we are ranked so low

 

[Macca19]

Almost all defenders have high disposal efficiency no matter who they play for. Not sure why? Maybe they have more space to operate in? Most teams normally have a spare man in defense so easier to find a target?

A kick to advantage or a kick to a contest are counted as efficient kicks, so there are more chances for defenders to record an efficient kick

 

[Us against the rest]

What ever way you want to look at it, our skills are still poor. Is it that we recruit a player because he can run fast or mark well but has not got the complete set of skills, where he can mark, kick, hand ball and do all the things needed to be a good consistent footballer. DBJ seems to have the full book along with Austin, his kicking is sweet. Ebert is a good mark but his kicking can be 50-50. Polec is a lovely kick and runner but lacks the defensive side to his game. My theory is a player like Polec for example relies on a wining midfield to get the ball out, that's why he looks poor when our mids are down. We need players that have all the skills needed, not one trick ponies.

 

[PAFC66]

We were poorly skilled in 2012 too and it's no coincidence that the players on this list still are.

These players were on our list in 2012 and currently still are.
2012 to current
Westhoff
Monfries
Ah Chee
Carlile
O'Shea
Pittard
Lobbe
Jonas
Broadbent
Trengove
Wingard
Schulz
Butcher
Stewart
Ebert
Hartlett
Boak
Young
R Gray
Hombsch

Monfries ?

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

I get that it is not a good look... But Geelong have Danger, Duncan and Selwood all in the top 10 and they are sitting top of the ladder. It is not a nice stat, but not as damning as you are making it out to be. A lot of inside mids have high clanger counts.

I didn't bring up the clanger stats, someone asked if 3 of our players were top 5 and I found them for him. Clangers included handball errors and other non kicking errors.

Simple basic maths is if the AFL average side's kicking efficiency is 63% and in games we kick at 51-55% and the opposition kick at 64% and there are similar number of kicks for both sides, then the maths says you are going to lose a lot more than you win when you produce that 'beautiful set of numbers."

 

[edgie]

For some reason, this triggered a memory of Kane Cornes trying to pinpoint this ridiculous pass between two eagles players at Subiaco in 2011. We were competitive and ended up only losing by about 4 goals, but at the time we still had a sniff. He then attempts to thread this needle that required absolutely perfect distance, trajectory, weighting, accuracy - pretty much had to be a centimetre perfect kick. Obviously, it missed, turnover.

Like, that never should have happened. What made Kane think he could do that, and why did the other player call for it?

5 years later, no change.

 

[Us against the rest]

Monfries ?

Oops, my bad. i will fix that.

 

[raptalia]

At the post match presser after the Carlton game Ken Hinkley said, 'we played dumb football'. The news for Ken is all bad as we too often play dumb football. Often it is not the execution of the kick but the poor decision making that causes a turnover. Why would you consistently kick kick to a 175 cm player with two opponents? We seem to do it every game.

Is it one thing to be a talented skillful player and yet another to have the 'footy smarts' or do the two go hand in hand? Either way we simply do not have enough smart footballers who can read what is likely to happen. At times I think our players would do better to take the opposition on rather than kick to a player who is out numbered or running a metre inside of the boundary. Good kicking is an essential but so is smart football.

 

[Us against the rest]

At the post match presser after the Carlton game Ken Hinkley said, 'we played dumb football'. The news for Ken is all bad as we too often play dumb football. Often it is not the execution of the kick but the poor decision making that causes a turnover. Why would you consistently kick kick to a 175 cm player with two opponents? We seem to do it every game.

Is it one thing to be a talented skillful player and yet another to have the 'footy smarts' or do the two go hand in hand? Either way we simply do not have enough smart footballers who can read what is likely to happen. At times I think our players would do better to take the opposition on rather than kick to a player who is out numbered or running a metre inside of the boundary. Good kicking is an essential but so is smart football.

Yep you are spot on, the one that sticks in my head is a few weeks back when Stewart kicked to DBJ across goal in our back line, what was he thinking there were to opponents and DBJ and the kick was poo as well.

 

[Us against the rest]

One thing i have always said to the wife is, god i love this club but we have a lot of dumb footballers.

 

[raptalia]

Yep you are spot on, the one that sticks in my head is a few weeks back when Stewart kicked to DBJ across goal in our back line, what was he thinking there were to opponents and DBJ and the kick was poo as well.

It was a beautifully executed kick, straight to the Bulldogs player who goaled.

If we were smarter there would be more margin for error and our kicking would look better.
Surely that has to come back to the coaches? If Ken thinks we played dumb football he should be hammering the players with that observation. It is really annoying when the Coach hits the pig on the snout at a press conference yet players continue to take the wrong options in matches.

 

[1954]

I must have missed this deficiency in Boak's game, but do we really have a captain and top 10 draft pick, who as suggested in an earlier post can't kick on his left foot?
I would have thought any top 10 midfielder would have to be at least capable of disposing of the ball adequately by both hand and foot on either side of his body.

 

[ScooterBrother]

I must have missed this deficiency in Boak's game, but do we really have a captain and top 10 draft pick, who as suggested in an earlier post can't kick on his left foot?
I would have thought any top 10 midfielder would have to be at least capable of disposing of the ball adequately by both hand and foot on either side of his body.

That's actually been phased out. Many coaches these days will focus on developing the dominant side as a real weapon, and ensuring the player has the skill to execute on that foot at all times.

In other words the best practice these days is:

Dominant side - 95%
Non Dominant side - 50%

rather than

Dominant side - 80%
Non Dominant side - 65%

Think of all the really elite kicks - Suckling, Polec, Murphy ... most of the time they kick a dinky inside out kick on their preferred rather than risk kicking on their non preferred.