Gas is mentioned towards the end of the article.
------------------------------------
Can't kick? Can't win
Stephen Rielly
The Age
June 30, 2006
THREE years ago, Sydney coach Paul Roos decided to look back on football's recent past. Specifically, the premiership teams of the previous five seasons.
He did so with an interest in identifying the essential characteristics of success, indispensable qualities which, if common to all of the premiership teams, might serve as a template for a better Sydney game. He found only one.
"Inside 50s varied, contested possession and uncontested possession wasn't constant, long kicks, short kicks, handball receives … all those sorts of things were higher or lower with every year," Roos said.
"But one measurement didn't fluctuate; kicking efficiency."
Seven years earlier, Ted Hopkins, founder and football director of statistical services company Champion Data, set off on a similar quest. Hopkins wanted to know if there was an objective, quantifiable answer to the question of what, more than anything else, loses games of football.
With pay television arriving the previous year to make every game available for scrutiny for the first time, Hopkins and, later, a team of mathematicians reviewed the 1996 season. Their conclusion?
"Setting aside kicking for goal and concentrating on the field of play, the thing which clearly stood out was kicking, especially crappy kicking in the back line," Hopkins said.
"The better kicking team rarely lost."
And still doesn't, it seems.
It might just be the great joke modern football is telling against itself, but the rapid evolution of the game in the past decade, from contest to possession sport, has managed to simultaneously outrage traditionalists and restore the value of its oldest and most basic skill, boot to ball.
Which is to say that the absence of clean, accurate disposal demands from a player nothing less than excellence in other areas.
"If you've got a poor kick, that player has to be extremely valuable in other ways to be considered," Eade says.
Roos concurs, citing Brett Kirk as an example of a player who is not a good kick but who is nonetheless a good player.
"If you can kick the ball and keep it off the opposition, then some deficiencies can be covered," the Sydney coach says.
"I don't think you're going to dismiss a player entirely if he can't kick, but he's going to have to exhibit an enormous amount of talent in all the other areas of the game if you're going to have him in the footy club."
If kicking is important, even more so than ever before, then exactly how important?
This was the question Melbourne asked of Hopkins in 2002. The Demons had been beaten badly in the 2000 grand final and after losing a semi-final to Adelaide two years later knew they had to strip back a side that was good but not good enough.
Before rebuilding, though, Melbourne's then football manager Danny Corcoran and the club's recruiting manager, Craig Cameron, wanted to know, if possible, what fundamental qualities every potential recruit should possess. What mattered most?
Again, kicking was the answer.
Some Hopkins research not only told the Demons that kicking should be a player's paramount virtue, after which all other talents should be assessed, but put an actual worth on it.
"What we were able to prove is that each effective kick more than the opposition, a kick over a distance of 40 metres or more, was worth 1.4 points," Hopkins said.
"So, for example, if a team has 10 more effective long kicks than its opposition the advantage to the better kicking team is 14 points, or more than two goals."
This was good enough for Cameron to rethink his player assessment priorities. When he joined Melbourne in 1996, athleticism, power and endurance were the highly-prized attributes every club in the land sought in its recruits. The thinking that a player, if not an athlete and a born footballer together, should be an athlete first was very much in vogue.
Cameron says that is no longer the case although, he adds, this is not to absurdly dismiss everything other than kicking.
"We've definitely taken a strong view on kicking. I don't think we're as absolute as some clubs who will simply rule a player out if he can't kick, because I don't think you can be without an infinite pool of talent to choose from," he said.
"But a good player who can kick well might be a top 20 selection. A player of similar ability but who is a poor kick might not go until the fourth or fifth round. Very few clubs will invest heavily in a player now who can't kick.
"In that sense I think it's true that fundamental football skills have regained their value, are absolutely important again. If you can't make a decision, you get hurt. If you can't kick the ball, you get hurt.
"When teams run so hard as they do now and commit so heavily to supporting the ball carrier and to provide the next target, if the ball is turned over your exposure at the back is just too costly."
According to Cameron, kicking means more than simply delivering the ball by foot to the intended target, as important as that is. He watches good kicks take the game on because they are confident in their ability to deliver and sees bad kicks shrivel from the risks all coaches want their players to take.
"What it does is cause decision-making problems, because they know they can't kick it well enough," he says.
"So, sometimes, when the right kick might be inside they won't go there because they think to themselves, 'Uh, I might f--- it up', and a turnover in the central area of the ground is often quickly an opposition goal.
"Poor kicking can create and or exacerbate decision-making problems."
Which is a belief Parkin, the four-time premiership coach, shares.
"If you accept that all players will go out and win the ball when it's their turn, what happens after that is the crucial element of the game and that is delivering the ball to a teammate over distance. That is, territory gained and retention or possession of the ball brought together," Parkin said.
"A player who is a poor kick will have his options narrowed by his reticence to make a mistake, but will also change the way his teammates respond to his winning the ball.
"If the receiver isn't confident about the player kicking the ball to him, he will lead wider or to a safer position or not lead at all for fear of being put under pressure by the kick. It can change the psyche of the side.
"Another example is the way players will run to a player who is a poor kick to get him out of trouble, to bail him out from having to kick. Think about where they would run if the player with the ball is Luke Hodge or Dustin Fletcher. It can affect the way the team moves as a unit."
Parkin did not say so but it is not hard to believe that he had Jon Hay or Darren Gaspar in mind, players who have been brought face to face with football's grim reaper for one reason more than any other; their wonky kicking.
Hay is the tall athlete everyone wanted 10 years ago, the player the Kangaroos traded for only eight months ago. He is now playing VFL football, as is Gaspar, who has been fit for weeks but unable to break into the Richmond side.
Five years ago Hay and Gaspar were in the same All-Australian side but since then, says Roos, the game has changed so much and placed such a premium on possession that poor-kicking footballers are about to join the dodo in extinction.
"Teams are extremely good now at exploiting players who can't kick," Roos said.
"They leave them free or work to have them finish with the ball in their hands knowing that they will turn it over. It's not an exaggeration to say that we're seeing careers brought to an end because the players concerned can't kick."Why is it that a player who is a poor kick but is capable of getting the ball 30 times a week often isn't tagged any more? Five years ago that player, by the weight of his numbers, would have been assigned someone and shut down.
"Now, it's the good kicks who might only get the ball 15 times who are tagged. Given that it's usual for someone from the other side to get a reasonable amount of the ball, you encourage or try to make sure it's the bloke who gets a lot of it but gives it back."
Peter Schwab, head of the AFL match review panel, went to Germany to watch the World Cup and several years ago, when he was still coaching Hawthorn, he ventured to Manchester United's hallowed home at Old Trafford as part of an educational off-season trip. Schwab gained an audience with United's famously successful manager, Alex Ferguson.
In the course of their discussion he asked the Scot what he does with a player in his team who is a poor kick. Ferguson, with some incredulity, replied: "We don't have poor kicks in our team."
Which, as Australian football rushes to embrace the possession game that in soccer is an art, ought to be a warning to every schoolboy footballer in the country.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/06/29/1151174331495.html
