Author’s note: This was originally pitched to and accepted by a large newspaper. I was very excited about the opportunity and at the conclusion of the project, wrote 90 percent of it in a week. The short story is, I fucked up by never taking it to 100 percent. That was two years ago.

The fantastic, patient editor I worked with has since moved to bigger things and this article, a big deal to me at a time, now exists as a bit of nothing. As Levi Casboult approaches a quiet end to his career, it may not be of interest to anyone at all. Alas, here it is. I hope you enjoy it. -KS March 2019

I watch Levi Casboult take a mark in the goal square. A Levi Casboult contested mark is very exciting. Two metres tall, Casboult’s body isn’t a body but six writhing anacondas. Levi Casboult is the closest thing Carlton have to a Coleman-winning forward, which should be very exciting.

Then I watch Casboult wobble a nine-metre kick to score a behind and I am reminded that watching Carlton is not about excitement, but about unrelenting pain. Casboult has a kicking problem, but the problem is not his alone. It’s other key forwards, it’s Joey Daniher, it’s Darcy Moore. Even the best players run hot and cold. Although with Casboult, it is a state of permanent winter.

“Shit, I could kick that,” I say, a statement maybe not completely absurd. Bloated ex-players fell over themselves on television to provide solutions. He should drop the ball lower, crouch lower. He should get a physiologist, a psychologist, an exorcist. Why is kicking so hard for footballers? I played soccer growing up. Kicking for goal in Australian Rules seemed like free-kicks with no goalkeeper. What’s the issue. Wind?

Shit, could I kick better than Casboult? Well, yes. But how would I do it? The key to any plan is setting specific, measurable goals. I could repeat his kicks and aim to kick a better score. But which year? Coming from a background of school soccer, I’d want to compare myself to his worst year (Casboult had errant years, but 2016 had been especially dark). And when? I had a full-time job. I’d need some time to train. And buy a football, I guess. A year. This is pretty doable, I thought. This is what happens when you support Carlton and slowly lose your mind.

When a player wants to fix their kick, they work internally with an assistant coach. In extreme cases, they head to a specialist. Dr Kevin Ball holds a PhD in biomechanics and has worked with the Fremantle Dockers and several rugby league teams as a specialist kicking coach. He uses video analysis and motion capture tools to diagnose and fix problems. Kevin Ball is a football shot-doctor.

Anyone who’s coached Fremantle doesn’t need to participate in my personal meltdown, but when I emailed him out of the blue, the project sounded like fun to him. Kevin invited me to his office at Victoria University where he teaches biomechanics to discuss a plan of attack. I brought along a shot-chart of Casboult’s 2016 season.

It looked like this:

“You won’t make these kicks,” he said, tracing his finger along the fifty metre arc. I am 180 centimetres (6 feet on dating apps) and 80 kilograms. A reasonable size for life, but not for football. Casboult is listed at 198 centimetres and 99 kilograms. Where I was gifted with a leg, Casboult had a cannon. “That’s where the conditioning will come in.”

Kevin prescribed a variety of leg exercises in the gym- squats, deadlifts and cleans. The plan was to steadily build muscle in the gym, fuelled by an uninspiring diet of steamed chicken and salad.

Then there was the homework - short kicks, working backwards into longer shots at goal. Shorter kicks are mechanically easier and encouraged strong fundamentals. The easier kicks would feed my confidence early and often, essential for the harder kicks to follow. Kevin’s training plan had three components- conditioning, kicking and psychology. In our sessions, he counted them off early and often.

Kevin took videos of my kicking action from multiple angles. He identified a problem with my ball drop, one of the more variable actions in the kicking motion. The higher the release, the more the ball can turn before it hits the foot. Kevin recommended I drop the ball with two hands, like a hot bowl of pasta. I tried not to be offended.

The two-handed drop was the preferred technique of small children or the generally uncoordinated. With six months to go, I needed to perfect known techniques, not leap to new solutions. I persisted with my original plan, one-handed.

Mornings were spent at the local oval, kicking drop-punts to my dog before work. Muscle and technique fed into each other. I was kicking longer, but lacked consistency. My ball drop remained high and chaotic. I texted Kevin for another lesson.

The two-handed drop was something Kevin had considered for a while, observing it first in his young son’s first kicks of the football. They were straight and consistent, but habits were quickly trained out of him by junior football coaches. The thought returned when he began noticing the two-handed drop in elite players like Gary Ablett Jr using it in field-kicks away from goal. Dropping the ball two-handed meant a lower release point and a lower chance for error. The mechanics made for a simpler, straighter kick, albeit at the cost of distance. If I were to build more mass in my leg, I could make some of that distance back.

It would mean going backwards to learn a new technique. I had months left, but I had plateaued with my current regimen. Humbled, I committed to the new drop. For the rest of my training, I converting to the funky church of the two-handed.

Conditions were optimal on the day of the challenge. A dry summer afternoon, with no wind. I studied the shot chart. I had a two-tiered plan of attack. Every kick under thirty metres would get a two-handed ball drop. Longer kicks would employ the traditional drop. I’d start with short kicks to build confidence, just like I’d practised. This is still pretty doable.

A friend met me at the local oval. He would photograph and video my shots on goal for posterity.

I dropped the first kick with two hands. The first kick became the first goal. Then the first six kicks became the first six goals. It was working. I was hustling around the goal square, hoping to capitalise on momentum. Casboult had kicked just eighteen goals that year. If I nailed most of my close shots, I was in with a chance.

Next came a cluster of three kicks thirty metres out. It was the limit of my distance with the new ball drop, but I had nailed similar kicks in practice. I heard the camera click into a tripod behind me. I missed all three shots.

Then the kicks started going out to forty metres. I started using the one-handed drop. They were erratic. The first few veered to the left. Minor corrections became over-corrections. Only three goals here.

I panicked, going back to the two-handed drop. I was confident in how strong my legs were getting. Maybe a simpler kicking action would help. It did not. Just two goals from six. I was running out of shorter kicks. Approaching the fifty metre arc, I had eleven goals and needed nineteen.

I summoned big quad energies. I hit a singular bullet from 45m. There were no more to come. The contest was dead. I finished the afternoon with twelve goals and seven behinds. I had missed all ten shots caught on video, folding under the pressure of a single camera. I had spent a year to kicking failure. It was instructive.

Kicking is actually simple, oppressively so. It pales in comparison to the complexity, the hundreds of micro-movements of say, aeronautics. Straight leg kicks ball. But it is stupefying how difficult it is to consciously control. It feels like connecting a dodgy printer to a wi-fi network. Except the printer is your foot.

It might be a task for the mental maestro, conducting your conscious and unconscious from an impossible third vantage. Or maybe it’s best suited for the intellectually subnormal, the best mind being no mind, the walking brainstem. (Is that why the best footballers seem so painfully dull?)

Whilst I was on my drop-punt vision quest, the unexpected started happening in the real world. Levi Casboult started fixing his kick. He finished the 2017 season with thirty-four goals, up from eighteen the previous year.

Maybe it was an altered swing of his leg or the picking of some mental padlock. He didn’t change his ball drop, suggested by many to be the key problem. Some alchemy was created between Casboult and his kicking coach, former AFL forward turned NFL punter Sav Rocca. Casboult survived to sign another two-year contract. Death, taxes and Casboult kicking behinds for Carlton. But we can reframe this.

Although considered the best key forward Carlton has (as well was being the totem of their struggles), Levi Casboult was never meant to achieve these heights. Recruited in the bowels of the 2010 draft (pick 44, Rookie draft), Casboult was a key position long-shot. Of the eleven players drafted, he is the only one to remain at Carlton, most of the rest existing in a post-football life.

If anything, Casboult is a hero, a player who has made so much with so little, and dares to improve under the gaze of hundreds of thousands. This is admirable.

After this little experiment, I still can’t kick. It is as bewildering as it was. As I return to my sedentary life, I inventory the insights framed by twelve months of training. Conditioning, technique and psychology- the mundanity of practice, the desperation to take unconventional risks and the scrutiny of a single camera. It made me appreciate the individuals who try despite them.