Learning The Art Of Kicking

When I played rugby I was also the kicker for the team and I literally spent years mastering this. I had a daily routine that would take me into another world for a few hours. Kicking a ball is very much like a golf swing and it takes practice to get it right. I used to get a new ball every year on my birthday and it would last about 6 months before it started going out of shape.

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He was there in 1983 so I couldn't find any archive photographs or footage so this will have to do.

I learnt a technique from the ex Bulls and Sharks kicker Cliffie Brown who also had a stint with the New Orleans Saints as their goal kicker. He was one of my coaches at under 20 level rugby and I used to spend hours kicking with him. We never did the normal stuff and this routine of his helped me become so accurate it was crazy. He won the golden boot two years running in a charity kicking competition that took the provincial kickers from around the country and they had a kick off tournament on accuracy.

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Leather ball with the television lines so viewers could see the ball more easily.

We used to place the ball on the corner try line which was in line with the rugby posts. From this angle you only see one post as the other is directly behind it and there is about a 5 meter gap between them. You first start off aiming for the pole in front and once you are hitting that regularly you aim for the one behind it by bending the ball around in the air. This is useful if you have windy conditions as you can direct the ball against the wind.

Once you have mastered that you then have to dissect the uprights without touching the poles and this just took practice and more practice. Now when you are kicking for the poles in the match you have a 5 meter gap between the uprights to aim for and it becomes a piece of cake. I don't know why other kickers don't do this as it really does work.

For distance kicking I had a problem as I couldn't get low cut boots in my size and had to make do with these ankle boots that forwards wear. Back line players have low cut boots as you have more freedom and can run quicker in them. I had these ankle boots which hindered me and had to change the studs out as well as they had longer studs in the front. You find trying to kick a ball the studs would sometimes dig into the ground before you kicked the ball which didn't help.

Funny enough I could kick a ball further bare foot than with boots on, but I was only good for one or two kicks maximum as the inside bit of your big toe would split open from the toes bashing together. Barefoot I could land a kick form around the 10 yard line which is close to 60 meters. This was with the leather ball and not this synthetic, rubbery plastic thing they use today. I have kicked the new ball as my cousin has the agency for Gilbert and they are definitely better and easier to kick than what I had. Plus today they have kicking tees which were not around when I played and had to make do with sand.

At the World Cup in England in 2015 to stop the kickers dominating the game the Rugby Board elected to let some air out of the balls to prevent less kicking for posts and hoping it would create more tries. If your team doesn't have an eagle eyed dick that is fine but I think they shouldn't be allowed to tamper with the balls like that. This is not a widely known fact ,but it is true. I noticed it when I saw teams struggling to clear their lines and the ball was struggling to go over 40 meters from their touch finders.