Where have all the goalkickers gone?Michael Gleeson
May 29, 2012TOM Hawkins leads the race for the Coleman Medal. He has 24 goals. It is a humble offering but it is the best we have got.
After nine rounds the leading goalkicker is averaging 2.6 goals a game. That sum would have him kick 58 goals by the end of the home and away season which would be the thinnest offering since Leigh Matthews won with 67 goals in 1975 and the least overall since John Peck's 56-goal season in 1965. So where have all the goalkickers gone? The answer is: they've been pressed.
This Coleman-lite year has been coming for two seasons, essentially since the press came into crushing vogue in 2010. In the last two years the Coleman Medal has been won with just 78 goals by Jack Riewoldt in 2010 and 71 by Lance Franklin last year.
The press, and with it the team defence mindset, has made the idea of the stay-at-home forward target as quaintly outdated as the man selling small bags of peanuts out of a sack.
''Teams are so much better and quicker at getting their mids back into the defensive 50 to block up space that there is just nowhere to lead to,'' former Geelong premiership forward Cam Mooney said.
''People have a go at Jack Riewoldt for standing in the goal square and pointing but it's because he has got nowhere to lead to. James Podsiadly [Geelong forward] said the same thing - 'you just can't find space'.''
Mooney said the change for forwards came in 2010 when Collingwood's Travis Cloke and Chris Dawes pioneered the model of the key forward leading to the wings for the release, or get-out kick, for the defenders. Since then all forwards are expected to be able to do likewise and push as hard up the ground as they do when they fold back at pace to fill the void in the forward line.
''I remember by the time I hit the logo [on the wing] I could not push back the other way. I was not fast enough or athletic enough and realised I had to give it away,'' Mooney said.
This in many ways should not surprise as the game across the board has become about team defence and offence.
''The defenders are pushing all the way up the ground when it is in the forward line and the forwards have to push up the ground when it is in the backline so that is why you are always getting 36 players in one half of the ground, they are all working that hard,'' Mooney said.
''The thing is you constantly feel out of position now as a forward.''
Former Essendon premiership full-forward Matthew Lloyd, who won the Coleman three times, similarly said that fast breaks from the centre bounce were now a full-forward's best chance at a one-on-one marking contest with a defender.
Players are now regarded as structure players as much as they were previously thought of as key goalkickers. So the tall forwards are normally not rated internally at their clubs by goals kicked (until contract time comes around and the CEO starts questioning why a non-goalkicking full-forward deserves big money) but rather on other duller measurables.
The key forward is no longer the prime avenue to attack, indeed he is now but the conduit for a plethora of others.
''With numbers pushing up the ground and breaking back into the forward line, when you do score now you are often on the burst and anyone can score then. Scoring as a whole has not gone down so who is scoring now is more spread,'' one assistant coach said.
Lloyd said unreliable goalkicking had also contributed to low totals. Franklin, for instance, has kicked 21.36 this season.
Lloyd believes more goals will be kicked as certain clubs begin to feel the pinch.
''As the season unfolds teams drop off defensively. I know my second half of seasons was better than the first half,'' he said. ''Teams that can't make the finals fall away and players go in for operations and games open up more so you will probably see someone kick an eight or nine in a game and then get up to about the 70 mark.''
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