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Player Watch Nathan Freeman

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Pleasedontfail11 said:
Ben Johnson was imo a poor kicker who became a good kick. But maybe i just misread him at the start of his career.
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Started below average and rose to average. Ended his career able to deliver a good inswinger from 50m on the run - loved his 2010GFII goal. He learned to allow for the curve when kicking for goal on the run. Still kicked a lot of helocopters and wasn't anove average accuracy in general.
 
Vinnie Vegas said:
That's a ridiculous oversimplification.

Ben Kennedy is a technically good kick, capable of some excellent work like this.

When he miskicks them, it is generally because he was tired, or needed to settle and compose himself, and both of those things can be improved.

The same is true of Freeman, as well.
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Dunno about oversimplification. Generalisation I'll give you. It wasn't a comment on Kennedy as such but a generalisation. Ridiculous? IMO it was an accurate assesment of history. Not many poor kicks end up above average.

Whether Kennedy is a poor kick I an not quite positive but he is certainly not at the high end of the spectrum - which is problematic given our footskills overall.
 
THATSGOLD said:
Drugs play a role in that. The Olympics particularly sprinting and athletics is not a clean sport. Look at Ben Johnson to Carl Lewis to Asafa Powell who all broke the record, drug related.
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Drug use in elite sports predates Ben Johnson and would certainly extend to the 70's and earlier.
 
Vinnie Vegas said:
That's a ridiculous oversimplification.

Ben Kennedy is a technically good kick, capable of some excellent work like this.

When he miskicks them, it is generally because he was tired, or needed to settle and compose himself, and both of those things can be improved.

The same is true of Freeman, as well.
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It's a funny choice to illustrate Kennedy's kicking - in the commentary Bruce mentions Kennedy has 'missed a couple of set shots'...

This footage illustrates part of Kennedy's problem - his wind up to kick is too much. Before he gets the ball into a position to kick, he goes through a wind up where he slightly waves the ball around to steady. That requires an extra few steps in the process. When he isn't under pressure (like in your footage) he is fine, but at AFL level, he won't often get those few steps, and therefore will be pressured too much and either kick into the man (which happened a few times last year) or shank the kick (which happened a few times last year also).
 

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TradeDraft said:
True but also when he was Running the ball was Swaying Side to Side or is that Normal?
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Exactly right Dave. I have said this a bit, but his kicking relies (at the moment) on that 'swaying of the ball' to steady himself to kick. Needs to eradicate that as soon as possible as it requires an extra metre or two of space to go through the wind up, which he will not get as much.
 
blaze036 said:
Players would of been much slower in the 70s... far easier to nail them.
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Sounds like an overstatement to me. Going by your own example of Olympic athletes from the 70's to today, the 100m track record in 1968 was 9.95 and has since been run at 9.58 by Usain Bolt. This is 0.37 seconds faster over 100m. Given AFL players will rarely run more than 50m (at most) we can half the equivalent difference to 0.185 seconds. Hardly 'much' slower.

This is also ignoring the fact that event hosts often engineer surfaces, pools, whatever to be 'fast', to ensure that records fall at their particular event. On top of this the likely improved efficacy of banned substances which no doubt were as rife back then as they are now.

All things considered, its pretty far fetched to claim that humans are much faster today than we were 40 years ago, the results and circumstances clearly point in the other direction.
 
dope_dj said:
Sounds like an overstatement to me. Going by your own example of Olympic athletes from the 70's to today, the 100m track record in 1968 was 9.95 and has since been run at 9.58 by Usain Bolt. This is 0.37 seconds faster over 100m. Given AFL players will rarely run more than 50m (at most) we can half the equivalent difference to 0.185 seconds. Hardly 'much' slower.

This is also ignoring the fact that event hosts often engineer surfaces, pools, whatever to be 'fast', to ensure that records fall at their particular event. On top of this the likely improved efficacy of banned substances which no doubt were as rife back then as they are now.

All things considered, its pretty far fetched to claim that humans are much faster today than we were 40 years ago, the results and circumstances clearly point in the other direction.
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He isn't talking about 100m sprinting, though, he is talking about footballers.

In the 60s the players would probably train twice a week, and not do much in the way of sprint training, leg strength training, etc. And there would have been more of a focus on 'footballers' than athletes.

These days, AFL players are trained more specifically to develop their speed to its potential, and are also fitter so can run faster through the game for longer.
 
Jelly Bean said:
He isn't talking about 100m sprinting, though, he is talking about footballers.

In the 60s the players would probably train twice a week, and not do much in the way of sprint training, leg strength training, etc. And there would have been more of a focus on 'footballers' than athletes.

These days, AFL players are trained more specifically to develop their speed to its potential, and are also fitter so can run faster through the game for longer.
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The example the poster gave to prove his/her theory was Olympic times improving over the decades, so responding as such was hardly beside the point as you are inferring.

No doubt players are trained to develop their speed to their potential better these days than a few decades ago, as a result more players on the field are quicker and the games pace has increased as a result. But the very upper echelon, the players that were considered the quickest of their era in the 70's compared to the upper echelon of today's players i doubt would be considerably faster or slower. That upper end would have improved marginally as they did in the 100m sprint example.

Again, the original point i was responding to was the belief that a renowned speedster from the 70's and his pinpoint passing whilst running at full pace was somehow not a special achievement as he would have been much slower than anyone doing the same today.

If the quickest runners of an era change so exponentially over 40 years I struggle to see how humans survived the paleolithic era.
 
dope_dj said:
Sounds like an overstatement to me. Going by your own example of Olympic athletes from the 70's to today, the 100m track record in 1968 was 9.95 and has since been run at 9.58 by Usain Bolt. This is 0.37 seconds faster over 100m. Given AFL players will rarely run more than 50m (at most) we can half the equivalent difference to 0.185 seconds. Hardly 'much' slower.

This is also ignoring the fact that event hosts often engineer surfaces, pools, whatever to be 'fast', to ensure that records fall at their particular event. On top of this the likely improved efficacy of banned substances which no doubt were as rife back then as they are now.

All things considered, its pretty far fetched to claim that humans are much faster today than we were 40 years ago, the results and circumstances clearly point in the other direction.
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How could AFL players not be faster now than in the 70s when players train longer, harder, smarter and eat excellently? Also nowadays more players are recruited based on their athletic attributes than any other time in AFL history.
 
blaze036 said:
How could AFL players not be faster now than in the 70s when players train longer, harder, smarter and eat excellently? Also nowadays more players are recruited based on their athletic attributes than any other time in AFL history.
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I think generally speaking players are quicker, resulting in a faster paced game, and this is due to a variety of reasons like training loads, diet, drafting etc as you mention. However the players considered to have elite pace from the 70's compared to the fast players today the difference would be marginal. Marginal enough that to dismiss their disposal at pace as insignificant due to the era they played in to be an overstatement in my opinion.

Again going back to the athletics example, the runner in question that held the world record in 68 i referred to was widely renowned to only train lightly once a week. Compared with todays sprinters who's training loads, diet etc are no doubt far more advanced. Yet they have only been able to improve his time by 0.37 of a second over 100m. In my view truly elite speed is something that someone is largely born with, all the bells and whistles will only ever account for fractions of a second.

The difference the more dedicated training, diet etc makes is in those players that will never have truly elite speed, however are able to reach the ceiling that their physicality allows on a much more frequent basis. The overall impact is a quicker game, but the truly fast players haven't also got exponentially faster, the gap has just been narrowed.
 

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Tend to agree with dope on this one.

The overall athlete today is not all that dissimilar to that of the 70's and earlier. The difference for mine is that the premium athletes are now choosing footy when in eras gone by they chose tennis, athletics and swimming. How often do we here administrators of these sports reflect on the halcyon days of the 60's and 70's?

For mine the area that has changed as dramatically as blaze refers to is the size of the players not what they can do athletically. John Nicholls, Dermott Brereton and Chris Judd are all within an inch in height of each other yet across 3 eras they have been legends of the game in 3 vastly different roles. Going forward players like Bontempelli, Mundy and Pendles will become the norm through the midfield and all of a sudden a player like Carey starts to look undersized as a KPF by the standards of the modern game.
 
Lets not forget the facilities now being used. Grounds are no longer mud patches. And we have a bucket of brand new sherrins behind the goal that are used after goals/behind making players skills look much better than players of previous eras. Especially when raining, in the 70s if it rained the players may as well be kicking a brick around.
 
Ketchup said:
Lets not forget the facilities now being used. Grounds are no longer mud patches. And we have a bucket of brand new sherrins behind the goal that are used after goals/behind making players skills look much better than players of previous eras. Especially when raining, in the 70s if it rained the players may as well be kicking a brick around.
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If it was Raining it would be like playing in a Lake
 
Pleasedontfail11 said:
Ben Johnson was imo a poor kicker who became a good kick. But maybe i just misread him at the start of his career.
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No you didn't misjudge him, as bad a kick as anyone ever at the start of his career.
A tribute to him was how much he improved to have an above average kick by the time he retired.
 

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Pantsed said:
No you didn't misjudge him, as bad a kick as anyone ever at the start of his career.
A tribute to him was how much he improved to have an above average kick by the time he retired.
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Even Toovey has improved his Kicking since he came to the Club as a Rookie:eek:
 
Manic Magpie said:
Jaxson Barham's kicking never got any better during his time with us.
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Well it's Different for Each Player.

Toovey was more committed then Barham
 
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