I’m a big fan of the draft camp concept. I think it provides the recruiters and coaches with a wonderful opportunity to spend time with the young men they’re considering bringing into their club and to study different aspects of their individual games closely.
But I think it’s time we updated some of the tests we put these kids through, so I’m calling on the AFL and the scientifically minded people associated with Australian football and sport, in general, to come up with a test for decision-making and the biomechanics of kicking.
We rank the draft participants on their running and jumping ability, their agility, their size and shape and even their hand-spans and reaction time, but we don’t rate anyone on their kicking ability and it’s about time we did.
So there’s a challenge and I put it out there to the skill acquisition specialists, the bio-mechanists and the Damian Farrows of the world to come up with a ranking system for the clubs, so we can judge a player’s kicking ability.
I don’t mind if it’s based around efficiency or technique – choose whatever dimension you like and I’m happy to discuss this topic with the experts at length. I do spend a lot of time talking to the authorities in this area, but it seems like everyone wants to bury their heads in the sand because it’s too hard.
It is a tough challenge, but I think we’ve got to be better than that.
We simply need to have some scientifically based testing for the skill of kicking and any decision-making test should also be based around kicking. Then, the results could be quantified or interpreted so that the clubs know exactly what they’re getting with their draft picks.
Even once a player reaches AFL level, there is still no definitive test to rate their kicking. Our two main sources of statistics, Champion Data and Prowess, each have different ways of analysing this skill, but I’m yet to find a list that accurately determines the best kicks at each club and also in the AFL.
This task will make for great debate. For example, should all long kicks be categorised as effective? Or, should a short kick that hits the ground only to be re- gathered by a teammate be rated as highly as a player who kicks a bullet-like pass through a flooded forward line to hit a target and set up a goal?
Surely, there must be greater weighting towards the latter.
The same could be asked of easy kicks behind the play or kicks that go sidewards.
While these are important in keeping the game moving and beating the floods and zone-off defence, they should not be deemed as effective as kicks to targets inside 50m.
It’s not an exact science when you simply watch video of a player’s kicking technique.
On TV, you can’t always see the demand or pressure a kid is under when he’s kicking the ball and often, you can’t see the target he’s trying to hit either. Yet, this is all we have to go by when we’re trying to judge who has the best kick.
Ultimately, it’s your kicking ability that determines how far you go in football because, if you can’t kick, you can’t play.
I’ve talked to David Hutton (Game Development Manager at the SANFL), Alan McConnell (AIS-AFL Academy High Performance Coach) and also Anton Grbac from Victoria about how much time Under-18 coaches spend teaching the kids how to kick.
These Under-18 players come into the AFL system and you think, well they’re the elite of that age group, but guess what? Some of the kids still can’t kick properly.
And I don’t think it’s the job of an AFL coach to spend their time teaching players how to kick. It’s an AFL player’s craft and the skill they need to execute best.
Kicking is an aspect of the game players need to continually work on and challenge themselves to get better and better at.
With the game becoming more and more about zone defences with players not necessarily standing next to one another, decision making and being able to hit targets is more important than ever.
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More from The Coach's Box, with Mark Williams
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The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
