The under-appreciated art of kicking in from a behind
FORGET lining up for goal. Defenders are in the gun every time the opposition scores a behind. JON RALPH reveals secrets kick-in strategies and who does it best at your club.
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IT IS the most nerve-racking kicking in football.
Your eyes dart left and right as you assess 18 opponents trying to pick off a pass as little as a metre off target.
They dare you to pull the trigger on a risky kick hoping to pump it back over your head.
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Forget kicking for goal at two posts 6.4m apart.
It is the AFL’s kick-out kings that endure a white-knuckle ride every time they grab a Sherrin after a missed shot at goal.
Stuff it up, as Brisbane star defender Chris Johnson did with the first three kick-ins of his career, and you spend the game wiping egg splashed over your face.
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But nail it — as the AFL’s clear kick-in star Nathan Wilson does most weeks — and the rewards are immense.
Just ask Richmond, which saw Wilson quickly play on from full-back and pump the ball into the centre square in the dying minutes of their Round 9 match.
The rest is history, as Wilson played a key part in a set play that ripped the game from Richmond’s grasp.
Shannon Hurn has taken 80 kick-ins this year yet confoundingly chipped short to Sam Mitchell with the Gold Coast game on the line and 50 seconds remaining.
According to coaching legend Kevin Sheedy, the kick-in is a finely tuned strategy that goes all the way back to Barry Richardson coaching at Richmond in 1977-78.
He saw the kick-in as a weapon to be honed and defended with strategy, a philosophy taken up by Robert Walls and later Sheedy.
The exponents need nerves of steel, with Wilson clearly the league’s best with ball in hand.
Champion Data’s kick rating for kick-ins measures not accuracy but also risk factor — kick to the back pocket 12m away and you don’t get any love.
Wilson has taken 26 kick-ins this year for an off-the-scale kick rating of +12.8, with just a single kick-in clanger.
Wilson has also played on 20 times from full-back and Heath Shaw 27 times, with Michael Hurley (37) and Dylan Roberton (36) leading the league in that stat.
Leigh Montagna, aggrieved with perceptions he saw a kick-in as a free stat last week, has only five play-ons from full-back this year.
Between them Collingwood’s Lynden Dunn and Jeremy Howe have kicked in 65 times with only a single kick-in clanger between them.
Conor McKenna might be too naive to know fear — taking huge risks but thriving with +21.3 kick rating from his 11 kicks.
At Richmond, Bachar Houli has played on with 31 of his 49 kicks, and recorded just one error from his 18 kicks from the goalsquare.
Yet Daniel Rich, acknowledged as one of the AFL’s raking left boots, has a -3.1 kick rating with seven kick clangers from 80 attempts. In other words, nearly one in 10 of his kicks have found the opposition.
Is it his fault, did a teammate fail him or do the Lions not have a finely tuned technique?
Triple-premiership Lions defender Johnson, the man who became the AFL’s master of the art, says it is far harder than it seems.
“I relished it although my first couple of kicks weren’t great. It was a game against St Kilda up at the Gabba and my first three kick-ins went back over my head as soon as they went out,’’ he told the Herald Sun.
“I think two went to Sean Charles and another went to Robert Harvey. But then Leigh Matthews built my confidence from there.
“He created drills for me in training and it all came down to percentages.
“Early in a game you play the percentages and get the feel of the game and then as the game opens up you can kick those long darty ones on an angle.
“It gave me a huge responsibility and a confidence within the group.”
In the early 2000s Johnson was tackling a 3-4-5 zone — a full-back and two pockets close to goal, four forwards 30-40m out and then five across the 50m line.
Now he has sympathy for players trying to kick through an 18-man press as teams zealously guard the corridor against end-to-end goals.
He and Darryl White knew what the other would do from kick-ins without speaking a word.
The 45m chiselled pass to just inside the left-hand boundary line became their go-to kick.
“Whitey and I had so much chemistry, I watched him from afar from Fitzroy and he had little signals about where he wanted the ball,’’ he said.
“He made me look good the majority of the time but if I kicked it to an area he would be 100 per cent committed to it.”
Great golfers remember holing 40-foot bombs, star forwards the matchwinning goals. Defenders who kick in remember the disasters.
“In the 2001 and 2002 Grand Finals I kicked it directly to the other team from my first kick-outs and they went back over my head for a goal,’’ Johnson said.
“But the runner came out and said, ‘Just keep backing yourself in, you know what to do’.
This year Greater Western Sydney is reaping the rewards from aggression and precision.
The Giants lead the league in kick-ins that transfer to their own 50m arc at 15.9 per cent.
Geelong isn’t far behind — ranking second in converting kick-ins to inside-50s, with Zac Tuohy playing on 31 times from full-back — third across the competition.
Sheedy says he was blessed to have Dustin Fletcher kicking in for so long given his arsenal of tricks by foot.
“He was very cool. He knew when to pull the trigger, he knew when we had to win a game with two minutes to go and had to go directly down the middle,’’ Sheedy said.
“He had the agility to play on and baulk or cut around blokes. He could kick the long bomb down the middle, or hit the player short or cut it across his body and find a target.
“Here we are in 20017 and Barry Richardson was coaching it in 1977, looking at set plays when you have the ball and when you don’t.”
Sheedy, the archetypal back pocket, admits his kick-in days didn’t last long.
“I kicked in one day and stuffed it up and said, ‘Over to you, Dicky Clay’.”
YOUR CLUB’S BEST KICK-IN PLAYER
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