The technical side of rugby is not one that comes easily to many – but it becomes a whole lot easier to learn when Joey Carbery breaks down his approach to ball-striking.
Joey joined Ger and Eoin on OTB AM, and let us into the period on the sidelines which had unexpected benefits, in allowing him to practice his kicking fundamentals.
“I think I really nailed my process. Rather than thinking about the kick or the outcome of the kick, I just went back to thinking about what I needed to do. Just going back to staying on line, kicking the exact point of the ball that I wanted.
Joey gave any aspiring kickers a great demonstration of what he does to ensure best practice.
“Normally when we play with the Gilberts, the logo will face me and I will try and get my body in line with that as that’s a pretty good estimate of where 45 is [...] Staying on that line helps me to follow through the ball.” Joey lines up the posts in a similar way: “I just use the seams on where I want it to go.”
His rehabilitation time also allowed Joey time to tinker with aspects of his run-up and the tees that he used to address the posts, and while he takes a non-scientific approach to training sessions he changes things depends on how he feels.
“Having that injury, I could test out a few things – I could change my tee during that time, so I could try out a few different tees and see what best fitted me [...] I wouldn’t keep stats on training sessions, but it’s normally if something’s not going right in training when I’m kicking, then I need to fix it to find out what I’m not doing. It’s all back to repetition really, and getting that muscle memory back.”
“You warm up a few close ones in front to get the feeling going, and then I normally get six or seven to the left and six or seven to the right, and then get the kicking coach to pick out six or seven different scenarios. Maybe a penalty on the ten-metre line to the left, then maybe throw in a few kicks to touch and we keep it so that you keep switching up.
“In a game, you don’t know where you’re going to get [the kick], you don’t know what the weather is going to be like, you don’t know what the scenario is going to be like. Being able to step away and do something and then being able to focus back in, you need to work on that as well.”
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