Blue Sombrero wrote:
If that bloke ever plays a game I'll be truly surprised. Given an Aussie soldier from 2 Cav Regt once kicked an american football 80 yards on a Hawaii gridiron in his civvy shoes, the effort of kicking goals from 40 out with a howling gale at your back (see the wind blowing his clothing) isn't that flash.
I'm not sure that the example of an Aussie kicking an American footy 80 yards helps your argument, BS. First, the ability of Aussies to boot the ball a long way does indeed equip them to displace Americans as punters in the NFL despite having little experience with American football - Rocca, McBriar, and Graham. Aussie Rules footballers have an advantage because they practice kicking constantly whereas only a small number of Yanks bother. It's much more likely that an Aussie Rules player would be able to kick long than an American who hadn't been trained as a punter. McNamara came from a soccer background, so perhaps he has an advantage there, although at his height he was probably the goalie. But soccer players don't often need to kick for distance (other than the goalie) and don't develop the 45 degree angle tilt of the pelvis that we use when kicking long for goal. I would have thought that at such an early stage of the development of his kicking, McNamara was doing pretty well. Secondly and more importantly, kicking long in American football is only half the battle. The main skill punters need is the ability to produce good hangtime. Kicking a low raking kick is disastrous even if it goes for 80 yards because the punter's team mates can't get anywhere near the bloke who catches the ball, enabling him to pick up pace and set up the best route through traffic. That's especially so when the guy who is going to catch the ball is someone who is seen as a real threat of running the ball back the length of the field, such as Darren Sproles or Desean Jackson. Punters use a kicking angle of 50 degrees or so to produce hangtime, whereas 43 degrees is the ideal angle to produce maximum length. American punters sacrifice length for hangtime. So your impression that the Americans would have been shaking their heads in wonderment at the 80 yard kick was probably wrong - they were instead thinking that he'd missed the point, however much they slapped him on the back.
McNamara is perhaps a bit too old - 24 doesn't leave him with much time to develop. It's a pity that Santy didn't come over when he was 17 or 18 - he was 21 IIRC and we were always going to have to wait until his mid 20s to see him put it together. Recruiting Americans will always be problematic. Those with elite talent will always exhaust their options through the College system. They gain university education and they are playing at a level that is comparable to the AFL in popularity. Some of the gridiron sides play in front of crowds of 70,000 and where the city doesn't have an NFL franchise they're the peak team. Even though they are amateurs, while there's a hope that they'll become instant millionaires by signing with the NFL, NBA, or Major League, A$50,000 isn't a very compelling reason to head overseas at the age of 18.
But there are a few things that might work in his favour. He played soccer until the end of high school and basketball for 4 years afterwards. Both of those are invasion sports that require players to play in tight, and both are often 360 degree games much more so than Rugby and American football. When it comes to rucking, he clearly has the height needed and is used to exploiting that in the air in basketball. In that regard, he has an advantage over guys like Aisake who don't have anything comparable to rucking in their native sports. As a ruckman, he has a bit more time to develop.
You have to look at his Youtube clips in chronological order. There are 3 spanning a few months. He has certainly developed a fair bit over that period. The handballing was clumsy in his first clip, but has developed nicely. His kicking was also mechanical and ugly to begin with, but had become much less so by his "4th workout". Initially, he was placing the ball on his foot without first lifting the ball towards his chest, but in the last clip he has started to lift the ball up and his technique is much better as a result. The last of those clips was recorded in July, IIRC, so no doubt he's progressed a fair bit since. Even if he hasn't, he still probably kicks longer than Fish, gale or no gale.
The thing about teaching these guys skills late in life is that you can control their development. I'm not at all sure that guys who grow up with a sport have a real advantage. They often don't receive the degree of tuition they need, and they develop bad habits as a result of teaching themselves. It's much harder to eradicate poor technique than it is to teach it from scratch. It reminds me of an interview that John Laws gave 60 minutes - they showed him on his private tennis court playing a game and he boasted that he didn't take up tennis until late in life but he was now better than guys who'd played it all their lives. No ship, Sherlock - training intensively with Australia's best coaches will do that when you compare yourself to some guy who probably received a bit of training until he was 10 and was essentially self-taught after that. One of the most obvious signs of this is that none of the guys who are recruited from overseas favour one foot over the other or one hand over the other. They develop both sides of their body at the same time. But there are plenty of guys who were raised in Aussie Rules areas who never bother to develop the other side of their body. When I hear the proposition that Aussies should be given first crack at jobs in the AFL, I think that a lot of those guys have ruled themselves out of contention by being self-indulgent when they were growing up. Every kid knows these days that you need to be able to kick with both feet, but try actually getting them to do it. And try getting a kid to develop a good kicking technique with the drop punt. They know better - that odd looking kick they practice gives them street cred (in their own minds) because it looks different. Why should they bother trying to develop a textbook style when that makes them just like everyone else? You can't blame kids for thinking that way any more than blaming the sea for being wet - it's just the way it is. But a lot of kids unfortunately are pretty well ruined by the time they've worked their way through to draftable age.
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