knights kicking game

[socksie]

here are my thoughts on the kicking game of this year and improvements for next year

there was one game this year (or 2002 i dont remember) where it was last tackle and the knights were throwing the ball around like crazy because no one wanted to kick it. finally it was passed to abes who frantically searched for joey and threw a pass to the other side of the field and was only marginally behind him. now i ask myself, why didnt he just kick the bloody ball himself? yes joey's a good kicker but dont rely on him so much. i'm sure daniel-son would've done a half decent job with a kick but didnt have the confidence to do it himself. when joey and kurt play in the halves, kurt leaves all the kicking to joey. i cannot understand why he doesnt give himself a more prominent role and take some of the workload off joey? he has shown he's a pretty good kick without joey but when joey plays he feels inferior and doesnt want to kick the ball.

despite my deep hatred for the roosters, their halves combination in brett finch and fitler is good because both take on the responsibility of kicking. finch doesnt think "ooh it's brad fittler, i better give him the ball and let him kick because he's so important".

i think, for the sake of joey and the knights, hages should encourage the likes of bedsy, kidley, abes to kick. some kicks (such as kicking for touch or drop-outs) dont need to be kicked by johns. the benefits of sharing the kicking duties include:
more ppl can kick the ball on the last tackle and they dont have to search for joey
other players feel confident because they are given a bigger responsibility
when joey's out (as he is quite often) we dont suffer in the kicking department as we have a coupla players that can quite easily take over

i think joey is undoubtedly the greatest player but if the responsibility is shared, his absence doesnt have as great an impact on our games and gives others an opportunity to show their talent

i think thats enough for my rant of the day. its just been an aspect of the knights game that has been annoying me for a while. what does everyone else think?

 

[Danish Moo Cow]

Not only all that, but the Johns kicking game last year was ordinary. Only a handful of trys came from it all year and not many at all in the second half of the year. The last one I remember was the broken field play of the Parramatta game here.... and that was Matt Gidley.

The only other kick trys we scored toward the end of the year came from mistakes in returning the ball that MacDougall seemed to score a few of.

Basically, the opposition has looked at Johns and worked it out. He's got to come up with some new material.

 

[roopy]

Michael Ennis should have some time ib firstgrade this year, and his excellent kicking from dummy half will be a real bonus.

Apart from that, I can see Kurt being given more and more of the kicking duties this year. Joey will still be the main guy, but Kurt will have a few plays that he works on and they will pull them out for surprize value 3 or 4 times a game.

 

[antonius]

Blue and Red socks is dead right with all of that. The Roosters example is a very good one (you forgot that Wing also has a fair kicking game for them) Johns is now isolated in games because everyone knows, nine times out of ten it's going to him EVERY 5th tackle play. So yes I totaly agree, we do need other options, the confidence factor is also a very valid point, so much so that the other potential kickers in the team must feel inferior if on the odd occasion the ball does come to them for the kick. I agree share the duties around a bit, something that they should be working on now.
Wedges comment on Johns kicking last year is spot on too, I can't remember a worse year with the boot for him than last season.

 

[Bring it home Knights]

I felt that Johns long kicking game was as good as ever last year. He rarely picked up the fullbacks or wingers on the full and that gave us better field position. It seems like ever since mathew johns has left, it's always been upto Johns to do all the kicking. I don't know if that was due to Rudder having a below par kicking game, or if it was because Hagan wants Johns to do all the kicking because he's the best kicker in the club.

The main problem for the knigts last year, was that Johns was so heavily marked. Whenever he got the ball, there was always alot of pressure on him. So the defence had 2 options when he was kicking. Have a few guys charge at Johns and all the rest be back covering the kick. If we had other guys kicking, we could catch the oppostion out a bit.

Kurt showed last year that he can be a good kicker of the ball. He's just not consistantly striking the ball well. That's why he needs to get a real go at 5/8. He has shown that he has a 5 star bomb. I don't know if it's because of injuries. But Johns bomb isn't like it once was, so I'd like to see Gidley take some of the kicking duties from 40 meters out from there line. Buderus was doing some kicking towards the end of last year and was showing that he has a good boot also.

 

[socksie]

Blue and Red socks is dead right with all of that. The Roosters example is a very good one (you forgot that Wing also has a fair kicking game for them)

yeah i thought of wing after i posted my last message
i believe wing is at most times a better kicker than bedsy. bedsy needs to get the ball and kick more often and show his kicking skills. wing is a good kicker because he can also play in the halves where his kicking skills are very important. i am not trying to compare the two because wing is a half that also plays hooker which is why everyone compares him to bedsy, and after all this is the knights forum and i might get my head bit off, but wing kicks more often than bedsy and his kicks are usually better.

aside from finch, fittler and wing doing most of the game-kicking, i wanna point out that they have a separate goal-kicker to all of that which again distributes the responsibility. i hate to say this but maybe we should be looking at the roosters kicking game for next year...