2014 Brownlow Medal

Boomer's the best kick in the AFL imo

 

How often does he miss targets? No matter the pressure or difficulty he nails kick after kick. He mightn't be a suckling/smith-esque 60 metre dart sexy looking kick but he just doesn't ever miss.

 

Looks like Champion Data back me up.

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3.50 onwards is the pertinent part

 

cliffs

44% of the time Boomer kicks the ball into the forward 50 NM goal or mark. Next best is Yarran at 37%...AFL average is 20%

Champion Data use a formula that transcends efficiency (as pointless easy chips backwards don't really count much) called a kick rating and Boomer has been #1 in that for the last two years by a mile.


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honestly I don't think Boomer's the best physical kick in the afl. You put players on a park and ask them to hit targets and others would probably hit more. But in a match sense kicking is more than just physical ability. It's vision as well and making the right decisions. Jasper Pittard is a great kick of the footy but makes poor decisions too often. Boomer just makes the right decisions with good execution. One of the most important things in footy is generating goalscoring opportunities inside 50. Boomer does that. might only be small 20-30 metre chips from 65 out but he nails them, others don't. And they're the most important kicks to nail.

 

I agree that harvey lacks defensive movements and as such I didn't proclaim him to be an elite footballer. I think Yarran's an excellent user of the football too. No matter how much of a kick chaser you are it's very difficult to find space within 50-65 metres of your goals. With the zone today it just doesn't happen.

The argument that kick chasers have high kick efficiency due to not worrying about defence makes sense if they're accumulating possessions in areas where there is space to be found. MacRae is a good example of this. He takes a lot of uncontested marks and long range handball receives on the genuine wings where he's left the stoppage/contest to find space.

I reckon a lot of Harvey's disposals are under real pressure. I agree he's defensively lazy but that's not to say he's not close checked by his opponent and it's not to say that gaining the ball close to goal automatically is uncontested.

The kick rating that CD do takes into account everything. Pressure, numbers forward of the ball, defenders in the flight path, area on the field, direction of the kick. Everything. If all his kicks were cheap uncontested ones in space his kick rating wouldn't be so high. His DE% is 77% or something. Great but not elite. DE% takes nothing bar 'hits a target or long contest' into account so i reckon what you've said might effect disposal efficiency but the kick rating CD do takes into account pressure and all of that.

I read somewhere that his kick rating was 0.84 and the next highest was 0.40 or something. That's a ridiculous and statistically improbable gap. Gotta be something to it especially when it takes into account pressure.