Former Hawthorn forward Ben Dixon believes Harry McKay’s goal-kicking flaws can be easily fixed.
Dixon, who spent time at St Kilda as the club’s goal-kicking coach under Alan Richardson, believes McKay is currently kicking at goal like a golfer without a caddy.
Having kicked 11.9 including multiple shots that haven’t scored so far this season, Dixon outlined how he thinks McKay can improve his accuracy in front of the big sticks.
“Yes (you can fix his goalkicking) … just let him have a little bit of composure,” Dixon told SEN Sportsday>
“He's got all the tools there, but he's just rushing himself.
“He's like a golfer that doesn't have a caddy, he's pulling out clubs and he's second-guessing himself.
“You’ve got to teach him that he’s got time and patience and he's got to have a reference point too.
“I'm not privy to the inner sanctum at Carlton, but all good goal-kickers have a reference point, whether that's video (or something else) depending on how they learn.
“But you've got to go back to your reference point on how you do it.
“When he hits it sweet, he hits it very well, but just in recent times, it's been an inconsistent watch and he's taken three seconds, to 10 seconds, to 15 (to prepare).
“He's really inconsistent from when he marks the ball and it's the beauty about our game.
“You get your time once you've marked it to prepare yourself for what you practice during the week.”
In the age of modern sport science, players have often failed to spend extra time practising their goal-kicking with training workloads closely managed to avoid injury.
During his time as a goal-kicking coach, Dixon says that holding players back from practising their techniques never made sense to them.
“I got a little bit of that (push back from sports science),” Dixon said.
“To be brutally honest, I sort of threw it back at a lot of coaches and said, ‘Well, why are they roving?’, they're not kicking or handballing - but they're running and they're doing agility with a ruckman for 30 or 40 tap outs.
“So, ‘What's the difference between that and a goal kicker who's got to finish the work when it comes down?’.
“They couldn't answer the question because there's more strain on the body doing 30 of those as opposed to 30 kicks a goal.
“You get frustrated, but the game's changed now, coaches are coming around to, ‘If we don't finish our work, we're not going to win games of footy’.
“If you're not putting that time into your program, especially from the front end, then you're kidding yourself.”
After booting 2.1 against the Eagles in Round 7, McKay will hope to continue to kick accurately in front of the big sticks when the Blues face the Lions at Marvel Stadium on Friday night.