I sat at ground level for a game last year and watched AW very closely, he is VERY focussed and you should have seen his reaction when he nailed a disposal he pumped his fist like he had kicked a goal.

Which indicates that he is working VERY hard on his disposal.

Once we are winning and the kid has more confidence in his abilities he will shine... Mind you he is coming along VERY nicely as is.

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Oompa loompa doompety dee
If you are wise you'll listen to me

I think the problem with Walker is that he makes a lot of "unforced errors" where he has little to no pressure on him at the time of disposal. Those Murphy 'mistakes' that have been mentioned all appear to be when the ball in contest surrounded by opposition where quick choices have to be made. And he'll get better at picking out players in conjestion as he get more experienced.

Judd has his clangars...seen him muff a few kicks, ditto for Nathan Buckley....but some players are very stylish the way they run, baulk , kick etc and you automatically think they have good disposal and never have many clangars..
Andrew Walker isnt a stylist, either is Andrew Carazzo....both have improved their disposal....poor Carazzo gets a raw deal of supporters who bag his kicking all the time yet I find he usually hits his targets or gets close.

Heath Scotland is a stylish player, moves gracefully and has a nice kicking action but he can turn the ball over as much if not more than AW and poor Carrots....A lot of it is perception rather than fact....

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

The 2 "errors" from the first half were he busted his ass and ran to clear the ball from the defensive 50 - looked up had no options at all and kicked it as long as he could, which bought us some time to get back - looking at it from a technique perspective it was a good kick - as were all the other ones he pinpointed in the first half.

Other one he had taken an awesome contested mark and got punched in the snoz for his efforts - got up slightly dazed - kicked it just wide of a contests and it dribbled over for a throw in - which we won posession from - so no big deal

Thanks for the appreciation guys - I'll get the 2nd half done tonight - so will be up here late melbourne time.

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

Which is a huge mistake. He's got to stop doing that. He should keep hold of the ball and look for another option sideways. Those kick forwards achieve nothing except to give the ball straight back to the opposition.

walker is still a kid, i can handle him making mistakes, hell i can even handle players in the waite, thorton bracket making mistakes at the moment (but both should by and large be working to get that side of the their games as minute as possible)

its when veterans make mistakes that frustrate me.

Yes Houlihan, Stevens, Scotland etc.. are in this bracket, and whilst you can expect a certain amount of mistakes, they are human after all, the amount of turnovers at times can be very frustrating.

Murphy is a marvel, again like Walker, they can make as many mistakes as they do, becuase they are still learning the caper, the pace of the game etc..

Both will be guns within a few years.

Also, Walker, Waite & Throton across the half back is turning into something im really enjoying watching. Setanta looks good at FB as well.

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Got to love the stare Down by Setanta on Llyod

First point first - some posters used to criticise Walker for not getting enough of the ball, despite him being in his first year or 2 of footy. In 2006, Walker really turned the corner on this and became a key playmaker, notwithstanding some hard tags / defensive roles ('hard' in meaning it was his job to shut them down, not that it was difficult):

http://www.blueseum.org/cfc/tiki-index. ... A%20Walker

Second point - I think Walker's miskicks are more obvious than say Stevens miskicks. Walker's miskicks may be more up & under or say the sliced F50 kick against the Bombers the other week. Stevens will miskick 2 metres short of someone but of course Walker's looks worse. Therefore it sticks in the head. This is not a comment on frequency of miskicks which I'd like to look at further.

Third point - Walker uses both feet at will during games, yet some mark him down on kicking. I thought on the weekend he was 100% from his left, which looked great and had penetration. how many other footballers get 40m both feet?

Fourth - I think some remember his kicking errors when going for goal in 2006, ending with the Lions game when he slotted one through. many players go through this problem but Walker / Carrazzo are 2 from 2006 who probably got more attention than most.

Fifth - I love Walks as a player and we often forget he is running full tilt when he passes. With more time and patience he'll probably slow down a peg in the last few steps to make sure he nabs the kick.

Purely and Simply he doesn't make as many errors, or as significant errors nor is his kicking as bad as people make out.

He's a @#$%&! GUN !

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

I think we expect way too much and are a victim of looking back at our past with distinctly rose coloured glasses (which is easy to do given the past success we had).


Great defenders in the past such as SOS and Andrew McKay had atrocious disposal - and some of their shanks were legendarily bad.

Michael Sexton was the king of the up and under kick - I used to pity poor Sticks as he waited under one of Sexton's specials.

Wake up guys - Walker is absolutely brilliant and yeah maybe makes a mistake or two - but he is heading for champ status and I would love to compare him and Cooney in 5 years - I think we got a good deal.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

I just finished watching the Hawks game again.

Walker you are a little beauty.

2 bad kicks...sorta ...one went out of bounds and the other...well it looks like he had nowhere to go and kicked it 50+m under pressure to a nest of Hawks; Kennedy was closest but a further 15m behind.

His passes are 40+m, both feet. That is an exceptional talent...and no one could catch him because he's going full tilt and bouncing and weaving.

He will be a champion.

Get real. Get off his back.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Let me rephrase then, Walker's errors have been more obvious than say Stevens. I am firmly in the 'How good is he coming along' camp but I think sometimes bigger errors stick in the mind. They all make mistakes, some are noticed, some aren't. When you start from a view that 'This player can't kick' you automatically notice it more than you would for someone that you think can kick.

Are you going to tell us all who had the most?

Would his initials be AW?

Maybe he just makes more errors.

I think Walkers gets a hard time because we simply expect so much from him. We all saw his first game and have seen him deliver on a number of occasions since - so I guess we're all hungering for it regularly!

Be patient young Jedi - he will come.

Did you even read the first post in this thread?

Did you watch the game on the watch the game on the weekend? Who did you think made more errors in the first half, Walker or Murphy?

It's human nature to place more emphasis on events that reinforce our preconceptions and ideas. This means that anyone who believes Walker isn't a good kick and Murphy is a good kick is likely to have registered his two mistakes in the first half as much more significant than Murphy's mistakes. Walker's mistakes were further evidence of something already known, Murphy's went against preconceptions and thus were dismissed as aberrations.

That's how we all perceive things. Someone has gone through and actually done some research on it. Take the time to have a think about it, you might learn something.

His comment was in regards to Houlihan - not Walker. I didn't provide my opinion on the matter; all I did was post a statistic. When does that constitute bagging?

Yes that's right. Champion data (AFL Prospectus). Walker made the most clanger kicks of anyone in the AFL in 2006. That's what their research said.

That's raw statistics. It only tells part of the story. There are players out there that never kick more than about 30m and go sideways most of the time. They'd almost never clock up a "clanger" but don't do a lot of good for their team either.

Was just going to post that. Walker may completely spray a few, ala Waite but this doesn't mean he will miss targets more often than those who we don't rubbish just because theirs are less dramatic.

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger