I have watched a lot of AFL this weekend. Amazingly though, I have struggled to find funny/inane/stupid comments to pick on commentators about. Luckily, Gerard Healy covered this evening’s Western Bulldogs vs. Fremantle game.
Healy first made me smile when he mentioned that a man sitting on a stool inches from grass level had a “bird’s eye view”. Perhaps Gerard has gone through life thinking that this phrase refers to a quail, or another small and flightless bird, because grass-level-man’s eyes were somewhere below the level of Pavlich’s buttocks. Hardly the view from above that the phrase suggests.
At another point, Healy was talking about Chris Tarrant’s likelihood of playing in the forward line, and helpfully suggested that “he doesn’t have the head space for it”. Interesting.
Finally, Healy attempted a comparative analysis between kickers in American Football and AFL players having shots at goal. His assertion was that in America, kickers who can’t manage 95% accuracy get cut from their teams, and if our clubs were similarly intolerant to inaccuracy, kicking at goal in the AFL would improve.
The most obvious problem with Healy’s idea is that American kickers have no other job but to kick, which is very different to our game. They don’t have to win the ball, to move the ball forward, or to create opportunities to kick at goal. Such specialisation is obviously going to have a big positive effect on accuracy percentages.
It is also worth noting that the worst angle they ever kick from in American Football is practically straight in front, and they are rarely asked to kick from more than 45 metres away.
So, it’s not a remotely useful comparison, at least not the way Healy presented it. Brian Taylor, one of the other commentators for the Dogs and Freo game, and prolific goal kicker in his own playing days, offered the more helpful suggestion that AFL players should spend more time practising kicking at goal. That makes more sense to me.
