Is goalkicking a skill learned or born?

[FerraraZ]

Do you feel that a player can learn to kick through the upright effeciently or do you believe that some people just have the natural ability and find it easy to goalkick. I believe that it can be learned and fine tuned. I played with a hooker in high school who freshman year did not even kick for touch. He practiced kicked the rugby ball against his garage door and by his senior year he knocked through atleast 3 50m penalty kicks. Oddly enough he was not great for goal kicks but could hit those long kicks.

 

[DC]

i learned to kick goals on my own, i would imagine its a little of both, to have the natural talent to be able to kick a ball and the leg strength, but accuracy and precision of kicks is all learned through practice.

 

[Twickenham-RULES]

I agree that you 'learn' to kick a ball, I used to kick for my team and have to say that most of it came from teaching myself, although at school I did have a good PE teacher that taught kicking technique.

But it was practice, practice, practice at the end of the day. I didn't have particularly strong legs at school (tall and skinny more like) but with practice I'd learnt how to hit the ball on it's sweet spot which carried it further than a team mate who just booted it. It's also about how you position the ball on the pitch/tee, in our case it was on sand, kicking tees just weren't around and by getting the right angle of the ball you found the best contact between ball and foot.

I do also beleive that you can be born with the talent but again you need the practice to make it perfect, if you don't marry ball to foot correctly... well we've seen the most talented of kickers miss.

Ah, the good old days. If I kicked a ball now I'd probably just tear my hamstring again, couldn't afford two weeks off work now.

 

[Gulli]

i agree that it is learnt to a great extent, but having said that people who are good at sport are usually born good. Although it does take a lot of practice to get better.
for instance when i used to play football(the proper football not that funny american one ) i played with the same group of guys for about 5 years give or take a couple, and some of us got better and better but some just couldn't, no matter how hard they practised and tried they still couldn't match it with the guys we played against.

 

[Canadian_Rugby_Guy]

it's a skill you acquire. Most of the foot players can belt a good one because they've got strong legs, but they don't have the technique to be as accurate. Kicking is something which requires long hours of patience and work to build, but once you do, it's another weapon in your arsenal on the pitch.

 

[melon]

It can be both. If its not natural then countless hours of training is required to firstly aquire the skill and refine all the little things associated with it whereas natural goal kickers may have to just refine their run up and stiking style.

 

[Bull]

It can definitly be learned, but it takes hours of practice.