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Kicking Pathetic

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Our kicking was/is pathetic and our handball not much better. This has to be the main area concentrated on over summer. Unless we improve in our disposal we will never be a strong side.

 

Our kicking was/is pathetic and our handball not much better. This has to be the main area concentrated on over summer. Unless we improve in our disposal we will never be a strong side.

Agree Redleg, assuming that you include decision making as part of disposal. Today I lost count of the number of handballs, and to a lesser extent foot-passes, which were delivered to a team-mate who was immediately under pressure.

Our handball and kicking was brilliant against Sydney, but has dropped off every week since then. It's obviously something they must continue to work on. We've got quite the number of midfielders and defenders in particular who can win the ball, and we beat Port at that today, but used it horribly.

I think our goal kicking was more of an aberration today, it's been pretty good most of the year. The Morton miss and Morton stupid pass were out of the ordinary for a guy who is a good kick.

 

I thought Morton's efforts highlighted your point! We need to be asking some very serious questions of Cale this offseason! He ability to win the ball is excellent, but he needs to do alot more kicking drills.

Our kicking was/is pathetic and our handball not much better. This has to be the main area concentrated on over summer. Unless we improve in our disposal we will never be a strong side.

Does this really need to be worked on as a primary concern over summer? Looking back at our year, our skills by foot have been absolutely fine in the weeks we're playing well. We're not West Coast with a team full of butchers; most of our guys are capable of hitting their targets.

I wouldn't read too much in to today's game. We seemed to be off in a number of areas where we've been strong through the year.


Every game we have played bad this year we over used hand balls. I have concerns for Morton's foot skills any kick over 45m great but under that he just can't hit a target. I have posted this before he pokes at to short distance kicks, they take for ever to reach the target usually with a lot of height, he kicks them like a lob shot in tennis. The only time we looked dangerous today was when Scully had the football. He still made a few mistakes but he took the game on he broke the lines.

Today high lighted also that we still lack that pure speed in the midfield. With Davey out the only player that looked quick was Scully. When we are on our ball movement is fast, we have good speed in our forward and backlines, just not in the middle.

Our handball and kicking was brilliant against Sydney, but has dropped off every week since then. It's obviously something they must continue to work on. We've got quite the number of midfielders and defenders in particular who can win the ball, and we beat Port at that today, but used it horribly.

I think our goal kicking was more of an aberration today, it's been pretty good most of the year. The Morton miss and Morton stupid pass were out of the ordinary for a guy who is a good kick.

It's a long season, especially when your finally out of finals contentions.

I thought Morton's efforts highlighted your point! We need to be asking some very serious questions of Cale this offseason! He ability to win the ball is excellent, but he needs to do alot more kicking drills.

Hopefully today finally showed some people that Morton is not as good a kick as they seem to think...

We have always had issues with our kicking. We don't have many great kickers.

It is something that worries me.

It isn't the most important skill to have as an AFL player or anything....

 
  • Author

Does this really need to be worked on as a primary concern over summer?

Yes!

.....

I think our goal kicking was more of an aberration today, it's been pretty good most of the year. The Morton miss and Morton stupid pass were out of the ordinary for a guy who is a good kick.

Nonsense. He is not, and it has been acknowledged as much, that he is not a good kick especially over short to medium distances.


  • Author

Did you read the rest of my post or just that line?

Yes again Nasher. I don't agree we have been fine all year. Winning games sometimes masks deficiencies. I believe that other sides even when losing can still get their disposal right, they generally just haven't got a lot of the ball.

I believe we have been poor in disposal for a while now. Our coach and recruiting department have acknowledged that several times and we all knew that we would only be recruiting players with good disposal as of the last couple of drafts. Hopefully we have done that. JT missing from 20 metres out straight in front in the first minute of yesterday's game was hopefully only an aberration. However we must have missed at least 7 other fairly easy shots and in the end that cost us the game. These weren't shots on the run under tackling pressure but rather set shots. That alone indicates a degree of poor disposal.

Yesterday we had 70 more possessions than Port yet our efficiency was at 55%. What does that tell you? We got the ball 70 more times than the opposition, had more scoring shots yet lost by 5 goals. I would put that down to poor disposal.Better disposal this year may have seen us win a couple of those close games we lost.

IMO we need to improve in that area and the way to improve is practice, not ignoring it and accepting that we are OK because we won some games.

  • Author

Iguessing the young kids must be getting tired by now. one more game and a big summer.

Not sure that is the answer. If you look at last week's fantastic effort and then yesterday where we had far more of the ball and more scoring shots than the opposition, that doesn't indicate tired players. You don't miss from 25 metres straight in front early in a game due to tiredness.

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