Last week on Channel Seven’s Taking Footy show Luke Darcy lamented the atrocious misses on goal by players only twenty metres out and directly in front. It was bread and butter stuff, opportunities that should be converted by professional footballers every time. One can only agree but what is the solution? One solution might be to reintroduce the place kick into the modern game.
I imagine the conversion rate from set shots only twenty metres out is actually pretty high in AFL football. Darcy’s blooper reel, of course, highlighted some howlers and made the problem seem worse than it probably is. In rugby the conversion rate from that distance, directly in front, is 95%. Whether that is matched in the AFL I couldn’t say. However in terms of general conversion rates rugby percentages are clearly higher than the AFL players manage which surely makes the place kick a viable option for goal kickers in the Australian game.
Of the top ten kickers in international rugby in 2013, five had conversion averages of over eighty percent. The highest was Wales’ Leigh Halfpenny with 83.8%. The average conversion rate at the 2015 rugby world cup tournament was 71.59%.
By contrast the highest conversion by an AFL player (with 50 shots or more) between 1965 and 2016, according to the AFL’s goalkicking accuracy statistics, is former North Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane player Michael Murphy with 76.83%. Tony Lockett’s conversion rate over his eighteen year career, remembering he holds the game’s highest goal kicking total, was 69.74%. Since the 1980s the average conversion rates of AFL sides has sat between 50-55%. Hawthorn’s conversion average in its premiership season of 2015 was 58.2%.
Of course the AFL statistics include shots on the run which is a much more difficult propostion than the set shot upon which the rugby stats are based. Nevertheless there is a strong case that the place kick would improve accuracy in the AFL.