Goalkicker

The All Black goal kicker moving forward.

Obviously 2016 World player of the year Beauden Barret will be a fixture in the team.

But we need to talk about goal kicking.

In the test 3 thread, the are comments like "where is the rule that your 10 also has to be the goalkicker ..." etc. this is true, but ........ I'm very queasy about not having like for like swaps between players in whatever position your designated goal kicker is.

Eg. Moving forward lets say we go Jordie as starting 15 and goalkicker, B Smith on the wing, B Barrett at 10.

Then if Jordie gets injured in the previous week and is replace by non-kicking Smith or Dagg.

It gets messy. Like M Cooper as a goal kicking 12 in 1993, gets injured and misses test 2 of the tour and we have a 19 year old winger and part time kicker in his second test taking the kicks (and losing).

Or Spencer/McDonald/Umaga muddle of 2003.

But at least their pros now, and whoever starts at 10 isn't Spencer or Goldie levels of goal kicking horrendousness.

Or maybe Jordie (and DMac) need to learn to play wing. Its not like Dagg was a specialist or experienced winger when they put him there.

@DMX What happened when Cruden came on in Test 3? Did Jordie go to wing (or Beaudie) ?

If moving forward. The selectors decide they want get a bit funky with their non-10 goalkicking solutions.

Their is hope that both J Barret and DMac are the 2 best U25 fullbacks in the country. So it might be smooth.
Assuming DMac become test match level.

@KiwiMurph said in Goalkicker:

@DMX What happened when Cruden came on in Test 3? Did Jordie go to wing (or Beaudie) ?

Jordie went to 14.

I think a good stat or measure would be to see what percentage of kicks they miss which are deemed easy compared to medium and hard if that makes sense.

Beauden seems to miss kicks that other top kickers get 99% of the time. I can understand kickers missing the hard kicks but missing the easy ones is not what you want in tight games.

Do our players spend less time practicing kicking as they are too busy working moves and doing attacking drills?

It would be interesting to know how much time the best kickers spend each week on their own practicing.

@chimoaus yeah that's what has been frustrating with Beauden. His overall percentage is pretty good, as people have pointed out, but he's missed some really straightforward kicks that have proved costly.

@No-Quarter That is what made Carter such a gun kicker in test matches. Not so much the overall % but that he almost always nailed the kicks he had to make.

Heard someone saying Beauden is working through a technical difficulty and is making progress - if so well and good. I think he's got worse as a kicker over the past couple of years - when he started out he seemed to have an eye like a dead fish.

Seems to me that Cruden has also deteriorated during a similar timeframe. Sopoaga seems pretty good, Jordie and DMac are good, but Richie Mo'unga isn't really in the top flight bracket.

In the immediate future it's probably not going to be too much of an issue. It's only the odd close test match that it really matters - where Beauden might kick you 4/6 and Jordie would kick 5/6. So you have to work out whether that extra three points is worth shifting Ben Smith to the wing to accommodate Jordie.

You can probably mix it up for the next couple of seasons as Jordie is edged into the team and Ben, Israel and Jules begin to be edged out. Mainly, I'd think on current form - Jordie can probably do the kicking when he starts - assuming that his next test isn't a Bledisloe decider or similar. I'd imagine, though, they'll be looking to ease him into the team a bit more with some games off the bench.

@Chris-B. said in Goalkicker:

Heard someone saying Beauden is working through a technical difficulty and is making progress - if so well and good. I think he's got worse as a kicker over the past couple of years - when he started out he seemed to have an eye like a dead fish.

Seems to me that Cruden has also deteriorated during a similar timeframe. Sopoaga seems pretty good, Jordie and DMac are good, but Richie Mo'unga isn't really in the top flight bracket.

In the immediate future it's probably not going to be too much of an issue. It's only the odd close test match that it really matters - where Beauden might kick you 4/6 and Jordie would kick 5/6. So you have to work out whether that extra three points is worth shifting Ben Smith to the wing to accommodate Jordie.

You can probably mix it up for the next couple of seasons as Jordie is edged into the team and Ben, Israel and Jules begin to be edged out. Mainly, I'd think on current form - Jordie can probably do the kicking when he starts - assuming that his next test isn't a Bledisloe decider or similar. I'd imagine, though, they'll be looking to ease him into the team a bit more with some games off the bench.

This. I think somehow someone got a hold of him and fucked him up. I'm not sure whether it was the prior kicking coach or the current one, but all of the AB 10s are looking like worse kickers in the last few years. That seems to be coaching problem to me.

@gt12 you'd think with Grant Fox in the coaching ranks, our kickers should be on the money, as he seems all over the mechanics of the kicking motion and routine, although maybe he is not having input there (or is and that is the issue?)

Do have a wee chuckle at Biggar and Farrells pre-kick routine, but hey, if it works, roll with it!

2017 Super Rugby season stats (kicking)

That's an interesting stat board. Cruden is hopeless!!

Wonder if Gats Snr gives Gats Jnr shit about being crap at kicking....

Particularly interesting to look at the conversions column, because it seems reasonable to assume people have a relatively similar distribution of hard and easy kicks.

Penalties - different teams have different policies on when they kick for goal vs kick into the corner.

The key one in there is the number of conversions that Barrett misses.

They aren't always out wide*, so he's clearly losing his team points by not being a better kicker - not just point scoring opportunities (i.e., PGs where he is still way below what he should be to be considered WC). I think that shows us that Sopoaga as the new back up is a good thing. With the game on the line, he probably should be given the tee - he's proved in the past that he has the temperament to kick the big ones.

• I went to http://goalkickers.co.za/ and set the filter to Barrett for Super Rugby 2016 (-21) then the Rugby Championship (-13). From looking at those, he's missing a number of kicks he clearly should get - especially a number of kicks in the middle of the park. Comparing to Lima, Barrett missed about twice as many 'gettable' kicks (from my observation of the Super numbers for 2016, Barrett missed about 11 while Lima missed about 5).

As @Chris-B mentioned, he used to be a better kicker, so I think he can become world class in this area - but he clearly isn't right now and I think it should be the number one area for him to work on. I feel like Hansen disregards it a bit - but we can't always win by scoring more tries if we don't turn them into sevens. We've been super lucky having Carter - who wasn't that much better, but was super clutch.

If Jordie Barrett is only kicking at 75% then why would you make him the goal kicker? Beauden is at something like 70% for his career. I doubt you are going to throw Jordie in the deep end if he is only 5% deeper. One thing I have noticed from watching the goal kicking stats from season to season is that players have good and bad seasons. Cruden, Sopoaga and West I think have all had 80% seasons but then they turn around and have a 70% season.

I think ideally if Beauden can get his kicking percentage up to 75 then that is good enough. If Jordie is going to be in the team long term (this will probably mean either or Dagg or Ben Smith isn't) then he should definitely be looked at. Beauden's problems are with his technique IMO.

IIRC during the game they showed Farrell's kicking stats and his test career stats is only around 70-75%.

@hydro11

I'd rather have Jordie's 75%. I don't have any trust in BB's kicking. He misses from in front too often and doesn't really have that much range. He could always start taking them if Jordie was struggling too.

Overall, I think right now Barrett just isn't world class in that area, and it's the one area of the game where the ABs don't have a player close to being the best in the world. That drives me nuts.

We were so lucky to have Carter for so long, who was world class (maybe not the best, but clearly world class). One of the nice things about the goal kickers site is that they use a formula (which we could argue about) that also involves things like importance within the game and kick difficulty. Carter was still a positive influence when those other factors were accounted for:

In Barrett's case, this has been a work on for a few years, and it's going to be very hard for him to go on to be considered a great 10 without him improving that side of his game.

My way of looking at it is whether I'd allow him to kick for my life, and of the team members assembled for the final test, I'd rather have Jordie that BB if that is the case. Dan Carter could be relied upon to make the big ones, so he's my leading kiwi on that metric.