A lot of posts already this year have been drawing attention to a perceived disposal problem that a certain mullet-sporting left footer in our line up has …
I’m not going to argue that Rhys Palmer is an elite kick, however, my memory of his first (stellar) season was that his kicking got a bit ragged in the last quarter when he was picking up his 35th possession and could barely walk., but otherwise was OK. But you can’t rely on memory, so I went to the stats:
2008 59.6 2009 51.1 2010 58.4
Ok, so they don’t look like great numbers. But you have to remember that
he is a running midfielder, meaning he is often fatigued and/or under pressure when he is disposing of the ball, which can affect your figures significantly – so it’s worth comparing his stats to a few other similar type players who are rated pretty highly at their respective clubs:
Ryan Crowley 2008 62.5 2009 51.1 2010 54.7
Jude Bolton 2008 62.1 2009 56.1 2010 56.1
Luke Ball 2008 58.4 2009 55.7 2010 52
So his figures seem to stack up against this group. So now if we look at a couple of guys in his age bracket:
Chris Masten 2008 54.4 2009 58.9 2010 50.6
Josh Kennedy 2008 47.1 2009 55.4 2010 57.6
Rhys’ numbers still look OK to me. (And Masten doesn’t cop half the crap about his kicking that Rhys does). Then against the guns of last year’s draft – both midfielders and both good performers in the kicking test at draft camp:
Tom Scully 2010 59.4
Jackson Trengove 2010 59.6
So how do his stats stack up against some of the purported elite kicks in the comp (and I am not counting backmen in this because they have time and space to operate in, which the on ballers don’t ):
Stephen Hill 2009 65.2 2010 62.6
Daniel Rich 2009 60 2010 61.2
Mark Lecras 2008 56.3 2009 61.9 2010 61
Simon Black 2008 58.5 2009 56.6 2010 60.8
Sure, out of every 100 balls kicked to you, Hill will hit you 4.2 times more – but the term “beautiful left foot” is constantly used in relation to his disposal … for a 4.2% higher efficiency? And what about Black – considered one of the best users of the ball in the comp - but the stats are telling me he misses the target pretty much the same amount as our man Rhys (the guy who can’t kick…).
And then there’s players like Boyd:
Matthew Boyd 2008 61.6 2009 54.6 2010 53.4
I don’t remember anyone ever remarking on how good a kick he was, but then, I’m pretty sure no-one in the Doghouse is sledging his disposal by foot either…
The only reason that anyone is talking about Rhys’ disposal is because people keep talking about it – it’s a self fulfilling prophecy probably kicked off by some tool at the Worst still smarting because we took Hill and the Slime picked Masten …
The point is, there's a lot of very good players around who kick the ball as well as Rhys, and they don't cop continual flack about their footskills. His kicking is not that bad.
Really.