Its termed a "dump kick", blind kick forwards out of a contest just simply to get it forward. Thommo a great exponent, Danger not too bad, Brad loved it this year and Gibbs is quite good too. Works amazingly well if you've got Wayne Carey, Jono Brown, Tony Modra, Kurt Tippett sitting in your forward 50 who can crash a pack or fly over it.
The dump kick was effectively Sando's gameplan in a nutshell.
The trouble is modern day defenses are extremely good at reading such a kick and then rebounding off halfback, that they've become more harmful than beneficial. 6-6-6 had the potential to improve but even then it only helps for center square, clubs quickly set up the extra in defense once out of this.
These days your midfield needs to be more calculating, move the ball around with handball quickly to a player in space who can hit a leading forward, something Campo was never able to introduce into our midfield.
Is it any surprise the 2 big exponents of such a kick have slid in Flanders and Robertson?
You've got to be far more measured, systematic and precise moving the ball out of a stoppage. Days gone past these guys go a lot harder because you wanted the have biggest, baddest, meanest, most couragous contested ball winners in your midfield and lots of them. Now you want 1-2 at a time, but then with 2-3 other guys who are more polished, clean, creative and deliberate with their disposal, still need to be able to win their own ball if needed, but can be smarter about it.
