After years of players like Perrie and Gill and the like, not to mention serial poor kickers competition-wide, I've always been under the impression that goalkicking is something that is almost impossible to fix once you reach AFL level. Unless there is something totally strange that you can easily remove from their game, generally these players continue to make the same mistakes year after year - the same poor routine, the same poor ball drops, the same poor kicking action. Clearly it's not something you can fix up by going away and practicing over the preseason.
Or is it? As some of you may recall, I went down to training a number of times over the summer and one thing I always noticed was the amount of time Porplyzia and Tippett spent practicing goalkicking. Porps spent most of the summer recovering from shoulder surgery, and would basically run/jog himself into the ground for an hour and a half or so, and then when he was totally exhausted, he'd practice kicking for goal. 25m out at five different angles, then 60m out at five different angles, then 40m out at five different angles, all over the forward line. He'd think about what he was doing and then execute it, getting it right more often than not.
Tippett trained with the rest of the group but was almost always the last to leave the field, and would basically work different angles, back and forth, about 30-40m out from goal. He'd kick goals for 30+ minutes solid after every training session, after two hours of work. His goals didn't always go in but what I noticed was that, as the months went on, his kicks started to look better. His misses were closer, the goals were more common, the ball drop looked cleaner. Sometimes he would work with a trainer for a while, other times he'd just go off by himself and do it.
Sometimes they would work with another player who would roll them the ball and they'd have to recover it off the ground and quickly turn around and snap the goal from whatever angle they were on anywhere from 15m to 40m out from goal.
Porplyzia's goalkicking has pretty much turned him into a commentator's wet dream this year - how easy must it be to talk about him when he gets the ball? His set shots are brilliant, and his kicking in general play is not far behind. I'm seeing him kick goals this year that I don't reckon he would have kicked last year, and they're exactly the stuff I saw him training in the summer.
Tippett's goalkicking is still not great, especially when he's at an angle, but nowadays straight in from, 20-40m out is basically a guaranteed goal from him, whereas last year it would have been a 50/50. From an angle he's gone from occasionally fluking it last year to being a decent chance this year.
I firmly believe that these two players have stepped up their goalkicking because they literally spent probably a couple hundred hours each practising it in the summer. Gill practised his goalkicking but never for the time these guys did. I saw Petrenko and Jacky often working together trying to practice kicking goals from the boundary line 30m out but they never really seemed to be taking it very seriously. Sellar did a fair bit of goalkicking practice too but I haven't had the chance to see him in AFC colours yet.
I hope that the club takes a look at it and points it out to the players. Go and practice your goalkicking for an hour a day, after you've already worked hard. Get used to executing your routine when you're tired. Understand the things you do right and wrong and how to work through them.
We're a side that gives away way too many oppurtunities due to poor kicking for goal and these two players need to be held up as a shining example of how to go about working on your deficiencies. It can be done.
Or is it? As some of you may recall, I went down to training a number of times over the summer and one thing I always noticed was the amount of time Porplyzia and Tippett spent practicing goalkicking. Porps spent most of the summer recovering from shoulder surgery, and would basically run/jog himself into the ground for an hour and a half or so, and then when he was totally exhausted, he'd practice kicking for goal. 25m out at five different angles, then 60m out at five different angles, then 40m out at five different angles, all over the forward line. He'd think about what he was doing and then execute it, getting it right more often than not.
Tippett trained with the rest of the group but was almost always the last to leave the field, and would basically work different angles, back and forth, about 30-40m out from goal. He'd kick goals for 30+ minutes solid after every training session, after two hours of work. His goals didn't always go in but what I noticed was that, as the months went on, his kicks started to look better. His misses were closer, the goals were more common, the ball drop looked cleaner. Sometimes he would work with a trainer for a while, other times he'd just go off by himself and do it.
Sometimes they would work with another player who would roll them the ball and they'd have to recover it off the ground and quickly turn around and snap the goal from whatever angle they were on anywhere from 15m to 40m out from goal.
Porplyzia's goalkicking has pretty much turned him into a commentator's wet dream this year - how easy must it be to talk about him when he gets the ball? His set shots are brilliant, and his kicking in general play is not far behind. I'm seeing him kick goals this year that I don't reckon he would have kicked last year, and they're exactly the stuff I saw him training in the summer.
Tippett's goalkicking is still not great, especially when he's at an angle, but nowadays straight in from, 20-40m out is basically a guaranteed goal from him, whereas last year it would have been a 50/50. From an angle he's gone from occasionally fluking it last year to being a decent chance this year.
I firmly believe that these two players have stepped up their goalkicking because they literally spent probably a couple hundred hours each practising it in the summer. Gill practised his goalkicking but never for the time these guys did. I saw Petrenko and Jacky often working together trying to practice kicking goals from the boundary line 30m out but they never really seemed to be taking it very seriously. Sellar did a fair bit of goalkicking practice too but I haven't had the chance to see him in AFC colours yet.
I hope that the club takes a look at it and points it out to the players. Go and practice your goalkicking for an hour a day, after you've already worked hard. Get used to executing your routine when you're tired. Understand the things you do right and wrong and how to work through them.
We're a side that gives away way too many oppurtunities due to poor kicking for goal and these two players need to be held up as a shining example of how to go about working on your deficiencies. It can be done.
