Round the corner kicking

Round the corner kicking is the standard method of place-kicking in all Rugby today.

History

Round the corner kicking was first credited to Wilf Wooler in the 1930s.^[1] It was later practiced in the 1940s by Willie Horne, the Barrow, Lancashire, England and Great Britain captain and rugby league player. His distinctive round the corner style of kicking enabled him to kick over 100 goals in the 1945–46 season and then he scored more than 700 goals for his club Barrow before his retirement in 1969. He was known to wear relatively soft-toed boots the heavier boot then general being unnecessary for him, unlike for others using the toe-end style of kicking which was then prevalent in both league and union throughout the world.

The first global exponent of the 'round the corner' style was perhaps Ken Scotland who displayed the technique in Australia and New Zealand playing for the British Isles in 1959. There was a significant increase in the number of 'round the corner' style players in the 1970s- Andy Irvine, Phil Bennett, Gerald Bosch. In New Zealand, they held onto the 'straight up & down', or 'toehack' as it was called down under, with such players as BG Williams, Bevan Wilson, Steve Watt until Alan Hewson came on the scene, the glove wearing kicker who kicked the last minute penalty at Eden Park in 1981, in a South Africa – New Zealand game. (CLA)

Advantages

The proponents of Round The Corner kicking which is the generally required method of kicking in rugby union today argue that greater accuracy and range can be obtained by this method compared to the Toe Kick method.

It can be argued that:

1. You use the flat side of the foot eliminating the chance of not kicking the ball in the center. (Flat toe boots however were used by toe kickers up till the seventies to eliminate this problem. Flat toe boots are still available from a USA website and used by American football kickers.)
2. If you swing your leg sideways you can extend your foot further than with the toe kick method giving greater speed to the foot and better momentum transfer.
3. The global experts in kicking accurately might be said to be soccer (football) players. Other than the shape (oval versus round), the ball itself has similar size and material. With "round the corner kick", one school of thought is that rugby players adopted this style from soccer. They might also have been influenced by the fact that rugby back line players began to wear soccer boots in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly on the harder grounds like South Africa where the large aluminum studs would cause stud pressure and foot blisters. Soccer boots enabled back line players to perform more quickly and agilely and also to kick more effectively, whether place kicking (using the soccer style for better accuracy), out of hand (touch) kicking and especially drop kicking, which needs to be with the side of the foot. Over this period most rugby kickers switched from the "toe kick", that someone like All Black Don Clarke, Springboks like Tiny Naude and Ian MacCallum were successful with, to the "soccer kick". A successful exponent who won games and series with this "new" style of place kicking and drop kicks was Springbok Gerald Bosch.
4. Generally speaking, during the transition period, "toe kickers" used to place the ball "torpedo" style (or slanted away). "soccer" style kickers used to set the ball upright. In the late 80's Canada introduced an aspect of kicking from grid iron or North American Football, namely the use of a kicking tee, which is now universally adopted by rugby kickers, as it helps set the ball higher and allows for a strike not impeded by the boot scraping the ground. Countries with hard fields, like South Africa, had already been using a small pile of sand to set the ball. The practice of setting the ball sloping away (on the kicking tee) has re-emergeed and is now the common practice.
5. An interesting analogy is that using the side or soccer style kick means one's leg becomes similar to a golf club, also allowing for great accuracy.

Disadvantages

The disadvantage of round the corner may be that it is more difficult to aim the ball especially when kicking from the side of the field, this requires greater accuracy to get the ball between the poles. Players using this method do carefully measured steps to put them in the right position to kick the ball in the desired direction.

Nevertheless, some older players that used the Toe Kick method in the seventies argue that there is little difference between Round The Corner and Toe Kicking and that Round The Corner Kicking is just a fad.

References