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I can’t be sure of this as I’ve been off my footy this year and haven’t watched too many games, but the torp hasn’t had much of a presence.
Indeed, I can’t think of one eye catching moment where someone has hit the sweet spot on the Sherrin and powered one longer than 70 metres.
That is a terrible shame, as the game is a much better spectacle with the torp as part of its landscape.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way to accommodate the torp more often? Especially by having our game’s best torp-spiralling talent at the helm.
You know those instances where the siren has gone and someone had just taken a mark, or got a free and they’re about 60 to 80 metres from goal?
We have four instances where this can happen each game, and you get it every other game. The player goes back and takes the kick, but rarely does anything come of it, does it? You rarely get a score, or drama, or even a perfectly executed kick.
The players keep going back to take these kicks regardless, as it’s a throw of the dice that costs nothing.
This is already a part of the game and one that rarely has a pay off, so why not try invigorate it with something? Why not introduce a rule where the team is allowed a designated player to take the kick?
Namely, their ‘Torp Specialist’.
The ‘Torp Specialist’ would be a player in the 22 who would have to kick a torp and only a torp in that scenario. Can you imagine the drama in our stadiums when Essendon are four points down at the final siren and Dustin Fletcher is called from his fullback position to power a torp from 70 metres?
Better still, going forward, Fletcher would have been practicing his torps all summer for just such an occasion. His coaches would have worked with him to find the Sherrin’s sweet spot, to extract a little more yardage and to tame the torp’s erratic nature – as opposed to furrowing their brows over mucking around with torps as happens now.
As Fletcher lines up, everyone in the stadium would be looking on in awe. We know we’re about to see someone who knows the torp inside out; a skilled practitioner who is capable of the miraculous.
Fletcher then kicks and whop-bam-ba-lupa, it goes through post high. Essendon win, the stadium’s roof blows off, and Carlton fans go home filthy that it all stemmed from the softest of softest frees. It would be the most marvelous drama – the Mick Malthouse press conference would be, at the very least
Each team would have two or three of these specialists, and I can envisage them spending as much time on perfecting their torps as any other skill.
Wouldn’t that be the most wonderful, heartening thing? The torp being practiced again with a real purpose; brought back from the brink of extinction like the Rhino and the Whale.
I’m sure even the most hardened of footy hearts would soften at the thought. And my great lament is that I didn’t think of it while Mal Blight was still around.
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