Goalkicker
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@Salacious-Crumb and then jumped back and was knocking them over from everywhere.
His massive improvement coincided with the legalization of kicking tees. Whether that allowed him to improve a technical deficiency, gave him a psychological boost or a bit of both we will never know but if he had started out kicking the way he ended it would be a case of Fox who?
Definitely a salient lesson for anyone to work on their weaknesses.
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@Nepia said in Goalkicker:
DC's 3 or 4 first test starts were all at second five (which I assume that's what you mean by centre).
Yup. Did he place-kick or was that Carlos?
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@Salacious-Crumb said in Goalkicker:
@Nepia said in Goalkicker:
DC's 3 or 4 first test starts were all at second five (which I assume that's what you mean by centre).
Yup. Did he place-kick or was that Carlos?
Carter primarily, he also had a test there outside Donald back in 2008 when they were trying to bring him along.
McAlister also had a couple of turns kicking from 12 where he was preferred to Evans & Delany. Evans kicked from fullback over McAlister in the 2007 RWC so not sure what was going on there.
Ben Blair was preferred to Spencer on the Cantablacks tour test against England.
Aside from those and the aforementioned MacDonald I don't think we've had a non-10 as the primary kicker in the pro era.
edit: and of course Weepu in the 2011 RWC QF/SF and Cruden's debut test a year earlier.
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@Salacious-Crumb said in Goalkicker:
Can somebody pls refresh my (fast-fading) memory...
When DC started as AB he was a centre, but mostly a bench replacement... did he ever start a test match at centre? And if so, was he primary goalkicker? (Making me think a player doesn't have to be a 10 or 15 to shot for goal. Piri wasn't shithot as a goalkicker either, but we gave him the job when required.)
Also makes me think about how Frano Botica, who was a BB of his day, wasn't getting selected over Fox, who wasn't nearly the magician that Botica was but had a golden boot and a match-winner.
(Later irony of course Frano jumped code and became one of very best League kickers.)
The main difference between kicking in league and union, in league it's nearly all conversions , the long range penalties are almost non existent, can be a little misleading at times when comparing the two.
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@kiwiinmelb quite. But Frano was also a kicking machine when he came back to the real game
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@Bones he did.
Around that time, it was him, Halligan and Ridge were leading kickers in the NRL werent they?
Didnt Halligan set some record for consecutive kicks?
Still recall watching him kick goal after goal one time when Waikato hammered NOrthland in the NPC at Okara.
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@rotated From the match reports Evans only played once at fullback in 2007 RWC and McAlister and him shared the kicking - I assume McAlister kicked until he was replaced. The Portugal match he kicked all the conversions but he was playing at 10 that day.
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@Nepia said in Goalkicker:
@rotated From the match reports Evans only played once at fullback in 2007 RWC and McAlister and him shared the kicking - I assume McAlister kicked until he was replaced. The Portugal match he kicked all the conversions but he was playing at 10 that day.
Right you are - Evans kicked more but McAlister kidked first against Romania
.@taniwharugby said in Goalkicker:
Around that time, it was him, Halligan and Ridge were leading kickers in the NRL werent they?
Eion Crossan was in that upper echelon for his stint there too, he certainly wasn't there for his speed.
