I do not miss

Zen and the art of set shot accuracy - Part I

A few poorly executed set-shots¹ tanked our team’s momentum on the weekend and served us our 10th loss of the season. Among the losses, several have been caused by a failure to convert scoring opportunities, followed by a swing of momentum against us.

Often we have explained it away as being the better team for most of the game but unable to sustain it long enough - as though that were diagnostic of our woes. Lapses, like mistakes, are natural. The inability to absorb them is symptomatic of a mindset deficiency. Nowhere is this more evident than in set shots.

Last night a talented young team mate of mine (and set shot culprit from the weekend) asked whether I thought a set shot was mostly mental.

Indeed I do, dear boy. I thought you’d never ask.

For the love of the game

In footballing terms I consider myself an amateur. Depending on your perspective (and footballing experience) you might adopt the less generous meaning of that word. I do have an unorthodox style and have never played at a professional level (a friend of mine enjoys referring to our league as park football - which translates roughly to “Sunday league”).

I prefer the literal meaning: I play for the love of the game.

The word amateur skipped across the English Channel and entered our language in the 1770s.² It came into French use from Latin via Italy, where amatore means ‘lover’.

It isn’t the particular footballing code I love so much as it is the game. The hunt. I play to play. In the 20 years I’ve been playing I have come to take very seriously the opportunity that football provides for thinking about life. It is a vehicle for the expression of character and the cultivation of a strong mind.

Seen through that lens, results bare little significance. I’ve had a remarkably un-successful “career” judged by a win:loss ratio. But that is precisely not how I judge its success.

It is all about effort and intent.

We have in our land of tall-poppy syndrome a pre-occupation with not appearing to try too hard. Indifference, like irony, is a protective mask against the vulnerability of letting rip. Accessing and baring your humanity is not for the faint hearted. I think this is why on-field intensity is often responded to punitively (out of fear) by opposition, and why this sport has a baked-in culture of confusing violence with competitive spirit (I will explore this elsewhere).

Set shot mentality

My set shot routine has had several iterations. I recall a costly miss in a year 11 away-game. A tight angle from distance, on the wrong side for a right-footer, with a prevailing cross-wind from the coast. It sparked in me so vigorous a determination not to miss a high-stakes shot again that I practiced and practiced until I convinced myself that I do not miss set shots. From anywhere. This mentality turn around occurred in the space of a week. It has since fared me well.

Between 2013 and 2018 I played “forward” a lot and kicked goals for fun. I developed a goal-sense and became a safe bet from set shots. Even difficult ones. With this grew the underlying belief that I could score from anywhere.

I’ve kicked 116 goals in 122 games of amateur-league football. An average of 0.95 goals per game isn’t bad for a midfielder. I would hazard a guess that over half of them are from set-shots. I can’t definitely say how many set-shots I’ve missed. I’d hazard another guess that it is less than 30%.³

I don’t mean to boast. Quite the opposite.

You see, a set shot is on paper a very simple thing. It is one of the few occasions in a football game where the entire field of play becomes un-dynamic (not quite static). You have the ball in your hands, you have 30 seconds to compose yourself, during which your kicking channel is protected from all physical interruptions. All you need to do is kick a ball straight between two big sticks, 6.4 metres apart.

Were I (or you) kicking at a stationary team mate, we would 9 times out of 10 be able to deliver the ball within 3.2 metres either side of them.

In a game, kicking targets are usually moving. Which makes it harder but more dynamic. You can “miss” and so long as its in the right direction, the player can adjust towards its trajectory or anticipate its bounce. In other words the success of the kick isn’t entirely dependent on its accuracy. Goal posts, on the other hand, are less forgiving. They don’t move.

But that’s exactly the point: goal posts don’t move. So how is it then that set shots so often miss!?

My sweet wife, whose footballing knowledge was negative prior to coming along to her first of my games, offers refreshing and insightful assessments as a spectator. Uninterested in tactic, strategy and jargon (and, mercifully, inoculated against the horrible drawl that people - men and women alike - adopt when discussing this game), she is perceptive of the ebb and flow of energy in a game, and the impact of individual effort on momentum.

One of her most astute observations was that a set-shot is the only moment where the entire weight of the game rests on one player. The momentum of the team is the sole responsibility of the player preparing to try and score. Failure to do so impacts the team.

While the field of play may be static, all of that dynamic energy becomes internalised in the mind of player. People often crumble under that pressure. You can usually see it coming in their body language.

It takes a level of self-mastery to delight in the burden; to relish it as a privilege.⁴ Dumb adherence to process is the safest way to combat the pressure.

My routine

I figure that given the goal posts don’t move it’s my responsibility to keep everything else constant. If I could make my kicking process consistent, there would be little that changes between attempts. I developed a rigid set shot routine to eliminate all external variables.

Twenty large paces back from the man on the mark (facing the goal at all times). Align the seam of the ball with the centre point between my boots before bringing it to rest in natural position (Point A). Pick a stationary point far-behind the centre of the goals, adjusted sidewards for wind and distance (Point B). Fix my eyes on Point B and raise the ball along the line segment between the two points, visualising the trajectory of the ball. Return the ball to Point A. Inhale. Exhale. Starting with the left foot, five walking steps as if along a tight rope, a left-right skip to generate momentum, 3-5 running strides (subject to distance) and release the ball along its path to Point B.

You may think this is ridiculous. You may be right. But the best part about this is that I believe it to be a winning formula.

I don’t have to think about anything other than repeating the routine. If I miss, which I do, it is because I didn’t follow the recipe, I misjudged the wind or I over-compensated for distance. I chalk up the miss as an anomaly. My belief remains in tact.

By reducing the external variables I leave no space for mental noise. The biggest variable in the set shot routine is, after-all, the mind. The structure enables me to hold at bay the fear of missing. Knowing that I did everything in my power to avoid it, I feel able to move on quickly from a failure to score.

If in each instance you have to consider your chances and your routine, as well as attempting to execute the kick, you open yourself up to three tasks where one will do. Worst of all, entertaining the fear of missing precipitates that result. If you miss, you also reinforce the narrative that you miss.

This is a wonderful insight into the way the mind cannot to be trusted. It is a tool that must be kept in place. Giving it strict instructions to follow is a useful way of taming it. Giving it license to consider fear and how to overcome it each time, to reflect on whether you’ve practiced or can make the distance, as well as the function of executing the task is a vote for chaos. How desperately it seeks to run the show!

What pains me about seeing people miss set-shots is that most often the variable to which they succumb is their own mind!

Sensing a poignant life lesson in this, I explore it a little further.

Mamba Mentality

Earlier I estimated that I miss up to 30% of my set-shots. The title of this piece is not misleading because it doesn’t communicate fact. It communicates belief.

If you believe you will succeed, you might. If you believe you will fail, you certainly will.

I recall summer days playing “friendly” back yard tennis games.⁵ My friends across the net would taunt me and persistently reinforce the story that I could not close out service games to win a match. I bought it. I came to understand myself as somebody that lost important points. So I did. I had a fragile relationship to failure on the tennis court.

Roger Federer won 80% of his 1,526 professional singles matches. Within those matches, he won 54% of the points. Barely more than half.

In the valedictory speech below, he explains —

When you lose every second point on average you learn not to dwell on it. It’s only a point. When you’re playing a point it has to be the most important thing in the world but when it’s behind you, it’s behind you. This mindset is crucial because it frees you to commit to the next point and the next point after that with intensity, clarity and focus.

Tennis is a game in which the greats have meticulous adherence to process and technique. Some of them (like Rafa) are considered superstitious. Recall the metronomic pre-service bounces of a young Novak at the Aussie Open, 17 on my count. By managing all the variables within their control (including the lodgment of underpants), they reduce the margin for error. Having done everything within their power, they are able to accept failure from point to point. You did what you could. Move on. Unburdened.

In a video circulating on twitter of a 34 year old asked by an interviewer to give advice to her 20 year old self, she offers this: ‘Everything is a mind game’.

She cites the following examples: Steph Curry meditates and visualises before games; Michael Jordan said it was just as important to spend time in the mind-gym as it was in the weights gym; Kobe Bryant believed every single shot he took was going in the net.

This elite mindset is my favourite dimension of professional sport, alongside artistry and athleticism. But must a player reach a “quality threshold” before they can develop this mentality? I propose their ability grows in lock-step with belief.

Learning from the apex predators of elite sport can lead us astray. Convinced of their preternatural talent we disregard the power of their mind forged in the fire of repetition.⁶

So here’s a similar lesson presented by Alan Watts.⁷ Taught to play the piano as a child by a teacher who would smack the back of his fingers with a pencil for each wrong note, Watts encounters a different teacher later in life. This teacher said ‘you must not be afraid of playing wrong notes… If you play the wrong note, play the wrong note. But keep the right rhythm.’

The lesson in this, Watts says, was to take away people’s shame about making mistakes. Just keep going. To me, rhythm in his example is synonymous with process in mine.

By submitting to rhythm or routine, you take fault out of the equation. Having done everything in your power, you limit the shame of making an error. There is always some explanation for the outcome: nothing is perfect and mistakes must be expected. Without structure each error poses as a personal failing.

Watts continues: ‘Freedom means the freedom to make mistakes. Freedom to be a damn fool and not to recriminate yourself when you realise it was a mistake.’

I know the dispiriting effect of reprimanding myself over a mistake. I also know the feeling of scoring a foolish attempt after having lowered my expectations to the point that failure is expected (freedom).

Mistakes and misses are inevitable. There are only so many things that we can control at one time. The result of our efforts is certainly not one of them. Controlling that which we can allows us to unburden ourselves of the result and carry on trying.

So line up the seam of the ball and let rip.

Post script.

I have taken a non-statistical approach to analysing set shots. The reason for that is, chiefly, statistical illiteracy. I may revisit this in Part 2. I am told (thank you GB) that examples like Lewis Jetta’s 0.19 (consecutive miss streak of 19) at the start of his career is a statistical impossibility, explained as an autocorrelation. That’s got to be mental.

1. A free kick within scoring range in Australian Rules Football.

2. One notable early use was to describe Edmund Burke as an “amateur aristocrat” by an opponent on theory of government. This from a 1777 source referred to at Merriam Webster online dictionary. Specifically, George Rous used this term ad hominem to undermine the conservative morality that Burke proposed in his famous treatise on government and society, Reflections on the Revolution in France (which did not view the revolution with favour). For those following along at home, do not be fooled by Les Miserables and other retrospective propaganda into thinking that the French Revolution was considered an unalloyed good. That said, Rous’ views on the role of government seem a more accurate prediction on the developments of democracy.

3. Unfortunately behinds are not a statistic counted for individuals at amateur level. I’ve kicked many many points (misses), often in-play and under some kind of duress. Sometimes very much not.

4. This is a paraphrase of Fredrich Nietszche who probably couldn’t have imagined his ideas being used to assess the scoring capacity of antipodean sportsmen running about in short shorts.

5. These were not friendly encounters.

6. One fascinating example of the relationship between process and mindset in basketball is explored here by Malcolm Gladwell. Wilt Chamberlain was notoriously bad from the free throw line — a basketball set-shot. His one NBA season of accurate free-throw shooting came the year he adopted an underhand technique. Despite unforeseen success, he dumped the technique. No doubt bullied out of it.

7. Watts is hard to define. Speaker, mystic, philosophical entertainer… If you want a taste, listen to the 6 minute video on Spotify from which I sourced this quote. It is titled ‘Why you Should Never Feel Guilty’, by Red Pill and Alan Watts.