Rugby Championship
Wallabies kickers must 'embrace big moments'
Sam Bruce
July 31, 2015
Wallabies need to feel the heat: Cheika

Embrace the pressure moments and practise, practise, practise: that's Elton Flatley's simple recipe for the Wallabies' under-fire goal-kickers.

And the forgotten hero from the 2003 decider believes Australia's Bernard Foley can turn around his wayward radar and deliver on the game's biggest stage later this year. The Wallabies No.10 endured an ugly night with the boot in Mendoza last weekend, nailing just five shots from nine attempts while those that were successful had an unfortunate look about them.

And it may be that ugliness that has Wallabies fans concerned with Foley having kicked at a respectable 70% throughout the Super Rugby season. Flatley said that success rate would likely need to be up around the 80-mark for Australia to be successful at the World Cup, but he backed Foley to right his radar, and perhaps more importantly the connection, before the World Cup kicks off in England.

"They probably haven't been kicking as well as they'd like," Flatley told ESPN. "Foley, on the weekend, I think he was just a bit quick in a few kicks. But it's hard for me to say when you haven't been in their environment; early on, the kickers are probably doing a lot of workload in a team environment, too. So that mightn't be given them enough time to kick.

"Early on in campaigns, you spend a lot of time out on the training field so the coaches may want you to get off your feet a little bit. But I'm sure coming into the World Cup, and Bledisloes, they'll really spend a lot of time on that and sharpen that up because, as we know, a lot of the big games it helps if you're kicking your goals."

Wallabies coach Michael Cheika echoed Flatley's thoughts and acknowledged he needed to afford his kickers more time in front of the posts.

Bernard Foley kicks a drop goal to put Australia ahead in the closing stages, despite the attentions of Mike Phillips, Wales v Australia, Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, November 8, 2014
Australia need to be on target more often with the kicking boots © Getty Images
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"It must improve, it's as simple as that," Cheika said of the goal-kicking in an exclusive interview with ESPN. "It's just practice; it's like anything, there's no magic formula. It's about practice and I don't think we've practised enough in the past. So I'll have to give up some things that I want the guys to practise on because obviously you can only fit a certain amount in in game weeks when we're playing.

"Then we're still going to have a little period there, post the Rugby Championship, before the World Cup; so two weeks here in Sydney and two weeks in the [United] States where we can really do some detailed work in the preparation of that. And it's just about practice."

The Wallabies face what Flately labelled "big games" in the early stages of this year's World Cup with England and Wales joining them in arguably the toughest pool ever assembled in the 28-year history of rugby's global showpiece. But even before that, back-to-back Bledisloe Cup encounters with the All Blacks - the first of which will be played in front of an expected 70,000-plus crowd at Sydney's ANZ Stadium - will provide Foley, and possibly Quade Cooper, with a sample of the pressure that comes with being the kicker.

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For Flatley, though, the recipe is simple. The man who kept Australia in the 2003 final with a series of high-pressure penalties believes kickers must embrace those moments; a mentality that in turn builds confidence throughout the entire squad, and one transferred to Flatley by kicking mentor Ben Perkins.

"I think it's like golf or anything that's really individual, where you're in a team and then all of a sudden they get that penalty or score a try you have to take yourself out of that team environment and it's all about you now," Flatley said. "Ben would always say: 'it's the big stage, it's your time to get out there now'. The key to goal-kicking is really enjoying the moments, that's what he taught me; you really enjoy that moment when you get the ball; you've got that minute when it's all about you and to be really selfish.

"And you know you've got your technique right, you've got your three basic cues; head down, nice and slow, through the ball. And the run-up was really basic, and then it's just repetition, repetition, repetition. And I think the training you do, and some of the challenges that you do at training, that breeds a confidence when the game's on. You know you've been there before and you've kicked every angle that you're going to get in a game. If you're not doing that at training, you know when you get out to a game that you don't enjoy that one minute because you're not as confident as you need to be."

In the four years since Rugby World Cup 2011, Foley's success-rate actually holds up reasonably well. Opta Stats reveals Foley's 78% is wedged between Springboks young gun Handre Pollard and All Blacks veteran Dan Carter while Wales full-back Leigh Halfpenny is a clear leader at 85%.

And, crucially, with more than a month between the final Bledisloe Cup clash and the Wallabies' opening Pool encounter against Fiji - they do play the United States in Chicago on September 5 - he has plenty of time to work on his technique. Flatley believes a personal kicking coach could also help, saying working with Perkins - who is worth checking out on Youtube as Blazing Ben - helped him find the enjoyment in the responsibility and readied him for the big stage like the 2003 decider.

"It's just practice, and to look at your technique when you're kicking goals really well," he said. "And I always found it good to work with someone; with me it was Benny Perkins but he was a part of the Wallaby team for a lot of years as a kicking coach; always based in Queensland. So he really helped me; if I was having an off day he'd pick it up straight away.

"I'm not sure who they've got in Wallaby camp around that but it always really helps the kicker if there's someone around, both at training and on game day where you can get out there and have a few kicks and it just breeds that confidence. And in the end, like a lot of things in life, if you're confident you're usually going pretty well."

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