BECAUSE everyone who has witnessed Trent McKenzie's football journey has a story about his kicking, it seems only proper to let his mum go first. Already, his left leg has broken lines and broken open defences, but only Karen McTaggart can say it's broken her windows.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Jaws have been dropping since the very first time her shy, reserved little boy unleashed a weapon that is being hailed as the most potent in the game. “He just picked the ball up and kicked it,” she said this week, adding “my goodness!” to sum up a gift evident even before kindergarten.
The Andrew Walkers of the world will always lift bums off seats, but to watch McKenzie kick a football is to experience the purity of the game's most fundamental skill. Some deride the notion that a sporting act can be a thing of beauty; they have our pity. When Gold Coast's No.?18 kicks the ball, a single word suffices: Wow!
“It's like a golfer when he picks up the one wood, or a cricketer who smacks that six,” says his coach, Guy McKenna, confessing to mid-game murmurings of awe from the sidelines. “When it's so sweet, you almost can't even hear it.”
Archie Pateras coached McKenzie at Altona Junior Football Club from under 9s through to under 14s. He doesn't know which story best captures this freakishness of foot, so he just keeps telling them.
Like the night at under-11s training, when he had two rows of kids passing to each other, half a dozen metres apart. Pateras walked along the line and stood opposite McKenzie. Three times in a row the ball thudded into his heart.
“All right, smart Alec, let's try your opposite foot,” he chided. His heart got a rest, but only by a few centimetres.
Then there was the under-13s game at Spotswood, when McKenzie marked on the 50-metre line as the three-quarter-time siren sounded. The home team headed towards the huddle but their coach, walking onto the ground alongside Pateras, saw the boy striding purposefully back to take his shot at goal.
“He's kidding, isn't he?”
Pateras told him it might be an idea to get someone on the mark, not to mention the goal line. It wouldn't have mattered — McKenzie's kick sailed through, three-quarter-post high.
Perhaps best of all he likes a tale that illustrates what others are quick to say of the 19-year-old, that he's anything but a smart alec, and will always choose what's right for the team over the temptation to showcase his skill.
Pateras remembers one little kid who was overawed by the game's bump and grind, so would station himself well out of harm's way. “I told the group, 'I've asked everyone to stay in their spots, and if that little fella has done that and you spot him, I expect you to kick it to him.'"
Within minutes McKenzie had the ball in defence, looked up, saw this lonely option, and drilled a 40-metre pass. “The kid didn't move, he just stood there,” Pateras recalls. “I thought it was going to hit him in the head and kill him.”
Mercifully, it dipped, hitting its target smack on the chest and rebounding back in the direction it had come from. McKenzie followed up, gave it back to the stunned mite, cajoled him to return the favour, and calmly delivered the next booming kick downfield.
“He was one of the most genuine, decent, level-headed kids I've seen,” says Pateras, whose son Declan and McKenzie were good mates, giving him an insight into his character beyond the football or cricket field. “He was never a big-noter, was always trying to bring the little kid into the game. He was just a natural.”
Missiles tend to make an impression, and murmurings about McKenzie's kicking have been building since he unleashed a running, 70-metre goal from the Southern Cross flank in round six that not even Essendon's 139-point win could erase from the highlights reel. His 15 games have been laden with booming examples, like the goal off three steps from well inside the centre square against Adelaide, but the biggest explosion came against Collingwood last Saturday night.
His second-quarter effort, when he took possession at half-back with only empty space before him, took a bounce through the middle with Brent Macaffer in pursuit, and speared through a bouncing goal from more than 70 metres, ensured Walker's mark and Eddie Betts's goal two states south didn't fill the entire round-18 screen. Arguably, his sweet, running roost a quarter earlier that comfortably cleared goal umpire Chelsea Roffey's head was just as good.
Karen McTaggart was at a ball last Saturday night, so missed seeing her son having one. But she is used to Trent's trick making an indelible mark.
“You'll be sitting in the grandstand and someone will say, 'Oh my God, I've never seen a kid kick the ball like this!'?” she says. “I'll be thinking, 'Well I did'. I'm his mum, I saw it all the time.”
When she tired of Trent and his brothers Kane (older) and Jake (younger) either breaking windows or kicking the ball over the backyard fences, Karen sent them out the front of their Altona Meadows home. It is here that Pateras — who lived nearby and says the McKenzie boys would be playing footy or cricket in the street no matter what time of day you drove by — says his kicking talent was honed.
“If anyone could take credit for his skills, it would have to be his older brother Kane,” he says. His mother says Kane, who enjoyed a credible VFL career with Williamstown (where Karen's brother, Brett, won a Liston Trophy) and now plays with suburban powerhouse Maribyrnong Park, was Trent's idol. He'd do anything his big brother asked.
“Kane used to send him down to the corner, to the main intersection, and tell him to kick it into our front fence,” Karen says of her then primary school-aged boy. “And he used to do it.” The corner is three houses away, Pateras reckons about 45 metres.
Karen says her three boys are a mixed bag — Jake, a Western Jets 17-year-old, “is left-sided at everything except kicking”, 27-year-old Kane is a left-footer who does everything else with his right. Trent swings a bat or golf club left-handed, and writes and throws with his right. All pale next to what he can do with his left leg.
Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball, about an American baseball manager who changed the face of recruiting, was compulsory reading for AFL recruiters. Where Oakland As manager Billy Beane told his scouts to look beyond a player's deficiencies and simply “get me the kid who can hit”, football moves further still into the realm of the kid who can kick.
Yet McKenzie is more than that. McKenna acknowledges that for all the tinkering of his ilk, the modern game comes down to two factors: “Having the ability and clean hands to get hold of the ball, and having the leg to kick it.” He loves McKenzie's natural proficiency in the latter, but knows there is more to his young gun.
“He's second for inside 50s for us, which is fairly easy when you can kick it that far, but he's in our top five as far as rebounds as well,” McKenna says. “Which tells me as a winger or midfielder he's working really hard both ways. That's the sign of an elite player coming together.”
The coach knows Kane McKenzie was “a bit of a hard nut” at Willy, and sees Trent relishing sessions with midfield coach Shane O'Bree focusing on “getting inside”. “He's got that unique power to get away from the stoppages, and if he can get his hands on the ball and get clear, as we've seen, it's a 60-metre-plus gain for us from a stoppage, which is very handy in the modern game.”
In this, another McKenzie attribute comes to the fore — speed. Only weeks after signing on as one of the Suns' dozen priority 17-year-olds, he finished second in the 2009 grand final sprint, a step behind winner Rhys Stanley. As regional manager at the Western Jets, Shane Sexton had seen plenty of him, but was taken aback in the stands that day. Sexton describes his displays of pace this year as “staggering”.
Scott Clayton has always had an eye for a good kick of the football, and says McKenzie is “extraordinary, no doubt about that”. But he also loves how the picture has filled out, “his contested footy, his marking, he's really improved across the board”. He's sure he's grown from the 188 centimetres listed pre-season. And yes, he doubts he has recruited a better kick.
Out in the world of online forums the superlatives flowed. One dubbed him “McCannon”, another called his kicking “animalistic”, a third eulogised the “utter disdain” he has for the Sherrin. Gen Y is abuzz with the fortune he could make by sacking the AFL and jumping straight to the modern Aussie rules retirement plan of punting in the NFL.
McKenna is very happy to have him. The former Eagle has childhood memories of The Winners on television, watching his beloved North Melbourne, but being drawn to the kicking of Swans Mark Browning, and later Mark Bayes. Locally, he loved Claremont's Brad Reynolds “hitting 70-metre drop punts that were like head-high missiles”.
The elite kicker must have variety. McKenna notes that McKenzie's footy brain is strong, too, and he resists the urge to “just pin the ears back and go thump all the time”, balancing the long with the short. “It's about hitting passes over a line of players,” he says. “Where most mortal kickers can't reach, and end up kicking to a contest, these blokes can put it 10 or 15 metres over the top and break up a game.”
And, of course, they can launch goals mere mortals can't, too. Another YouTube posting features McKenzie — whose eight goals, nine behinds from beyond 50 are a competition high — being put to the test at Metricon Stadium from 55, 65 and 70 metres.
That sweet action and effortless mix of power and timing send the first two kicks sailing between the goalposts. Steeling himself for the coup de gras, he offers a wry smile. “I reckon 70's about me distance, mate, but we'll see how we go.”
Needless to say he landed that one, too. What next? The moon?Some of the other kicking stars
AFL talent manager Kevin Sheehan on standout kicks to emerge from the AFL/AIS Academy.
LUKE HODGE
A brilliant kick. Was regarded as really special, his kicking just stood out — he kicked further than the rest, lower and harder than the rest. He had that 'ping' about him.
MICHAEL HURLEY
Just elite with both feet. Very rarely a kid of that size can kick as well left as he did right, and penetrate. He played a full-back and was a back-to-back All-Australian, and his kicking-in was an absolute pleasure to watch at underage level. Very rare.
HAMISH HARTLETT
Beautifully balanced. His use of the ball — short, long, right, left — was in the elite company.
DANIEL RICH
Again, 'pings' them like McKenzie. Low, hard, penetrating, over the lines. It's like the quarter-back who's able to spot the target and drop it over the top of that pack that's in front of him, onto the bloke running to advantage. Whether it's towards goal or leading up, his depth perception as well as the skill is elite.BUILDING A KILLER KICK
Trent McKenzie since he first came under the AFL development radar
MAY 2009
McKenzie's kicking was rated five out of five. The scale is as follows:
5 Rare (Consistently kicks with accuracy over short and long distances and under pressure. Outstanding technician with great vision and awareness. Very good on non-preferred side).
4 Excellent (Kicking a real feature of his game, only occasionally makes a kicking error with preferred foot, normally under intense opposition pressure. Very capable on non-preferred side, excellent decision-maker).
3 Good (Strong preferred-foot kick, rarely misses short targets and is sound over distance, normally getting the ball to advantage. May struggle with opposite foot. Generally a good decision-maker).
2 Marginal (Not completely sound with technique so struggles under moderate pressure. Lacks real penetration and precision with his disposal, and at times lacks vision and awareness).
1 Poor (Has flaws in technique and struggles to get the ball to advantage with any consistency. At times lacks vision and awareness).
WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT HIM
Trent had a fair carnival but showed at different times he will develop into an elite footballer as he gets harder on himself and works harder when the ball is in his area, and when it isn't. He's got a great penetrating left foot, he can kick over the lines. - ANDREW JOHNSTON, then Vic Metro under-16 coach, now Gold Coast academy coach, after the 2008 AFL under-16 championships in Sydney.
Excellent, penetrating left-foot kick, pace, evasive skills and football know-how. Reads the game well, good tackler. - SHANE SEXTON, Western Jets regional manager, May 2009.
Trent has a lovely kick in a technical sense, but at this stage a laconic approach means kick effectiveness is not as good as it should be. Attention to detail with his core will be beneficial in this area as well. He tends to lean back too far on kicks. - ALAN McCONNELL, AIS-AFL Academy head coach, September 2009.
