There are some innovations that come out of nowhere — an idea that seemingly pops out of the ether and emerges as an entirely new creation.
Then there are those innovations which require someone who sees something that already exists and adapts it so that it takes on an entirely new life.
Steve Johnson's round the corner snap — or the J-Curve as it came to be known — is one of the latter.
The kick is used for shots at goal from acute angles. A player kicking around their body with their right foot can effectively open up the goal angle by imparting forward and side spin on the ball, making it curve in the air from right to left.
For all the innovations and evolution of Australian Rules Football, the most basic skill of the game, kicking, has changed little over the past half-century.
By the 1970s, the standard kicks of previous eras — the drop kick and flat punt — were on their way out and the place kick shot for goal was long gone.
It's impossible to say who invented the drop punt, though certainly by the 1930s it was being used by legends of the game such as Richmond's Jack Dyer.
But as early as the 1910s, Collingwood players were using a stab punt which is essentially the same kick — albeit with a shorter follow through — for short and fast passing.
For 50 years, the drop punt has been the ubiquitous kick of Australian Rules football for obvious reasons: the back-spin imparted on the ball makes it long and accurate, while the method of kicking has less margin for error than a drop kick.
The torpedo punt is still pulled out occasionally when a player is going for extra distance, but unlike the reliable drop punt, it's a difficult kick to execute repeatedly.
The banana kick shot for goal is seen less often as players become more proficient with kicking snap shots on their non-dominant foot.
The snap shot around the corner kick has been the biggest change to the kicking landscape in Australian Rules since the drop punt became the dominant kicking method of the game.
And it's all thanks to one man.
An all-rounder with a flair for the impossible
Johnson was one of the great showmen of the AFL in the first two decades of the century.
He was often described as mercurial, but that term denies his consistent brilliance.
Over 253 games for Geelong — including three premierships and the 2007 Norm Smith Medal — and 40 games for GWS, Johnson established himself as a legend of the game in the midfield and the forward line.
In 2011 he became the last player in the AFL to average more than 20 disposals and two goals in a season — something he also did in 2008 — which attested to his ability to win a game off his boot.
Over his career, Johnson kicked five or more goals 17 times and so many of his 516 goals were slotted with his unique J-Curve.
The round the corner snap kick has always been a part of Australian Rules.
Kicking across the body is the obvious go-to if a player is moving parallel or away from the goals or a teammate, and because of pressure is unable to straighten up.
But prior to Johnson's innovation, it was only ever really used in general play, or if a player taking a shot for goal played on to open up the angle.
Blair Campbell was doing it for Richmond as early as 1968.
Johnson's genius was to recognise that the snap was a more accurate method for set-shot kicks for goal from acute angles.
What is extraordinary is that insight came when he was just 10-years-old, inspired by his idol, the Collingwood legend Peter Daicos.
"He was the king of the trick kicks when he was playing in the 80s and 90s," Johnson told ABC sport.
"I would spend a lot of my time practising the dribble kicks, practising kicking drop punts into my basketball ring out the back of my house and kicking snap kicks at the basketball ring as well."
And when Johnson went to the footy in his home town of Wangaratta, he'd always kick the snap.
"It kind of originated from me being a young kid practising kicking at goal from the boundary line on the local footy ground," he said.
"When you go to have shots at quarter time or half time at the local footy, very rarely do you see kids going to have shots from 20m out, directly in front.
"I was no different — I'd go straight to the boundary. But when I was taking my shots from the boundary, I'd never set up as if I was gonna kick a drop punt.
"I would just set up to kick a snap, side-on with the goals."
For those advocates of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule, Johnson could be a prime candidate for the argument.
"I got very good at it because I had a football in my hands, you know, every spare minute of the day, basically," he said.
"That's what I did: I went to footy training; I went to the local footy on the weekends and at school I did the same — I was kicking goals at lunchtime.
"So, I got very good at kicking snap shots, and I had a really good technique.
"And to be honest, I could kick equally left and right, just because of the sheer amount of numbers I'd done off both feet."
Johnson said he wasn't thinking a great deal about what he was doing, rather, he said it was just instinctively right thing to do.
That was until it dawned on him that his set snap shot for goal from a standing start was actually more reliable than kicking a drop punt from the boundary.
Johnson said the beauty of the kick was its predictability, and as he became better with his thousands of hours of practice, its accuracy.
"I'd probably thought about it a little bit more and thought about 'what is the percentage play?'" he said.
"I knew that basically anywhere inside the boundary line, if I was taking a snap and I'd set up right, I'd kick it nine times out of 10.
"Whereas if I went with a drop punt, it's probably a five out of 10."
He said the reason the snap was more predictable is because it was a more forgiving kick than the drop punt.
"You can drop the ball a little bit lower and basically hit the spot on the ball that you want almost perfectly every time," he said.
"And you're actually hitting a more forgivable spot on the ball as well because you're kicking more of the belly of the ball, even though it's underneath it.
"You can also put bend on the football, so get it spinning and put some bend on the footy."
He honed his technique over the years so that it was consistent on both his right and left foot.
The key was to hold the ball underneath with his guiding hand (the hand on the same side as his kicking foot) which gave him more control as he dropped the ball, allowing him to place it closer to his foot.
The football would be held at an angle pointing back towards his left hip, while he would align his body at a 90 degree angle to the goals, take two steps out and kick.
"I've just got to drop the ball, like in the same spot and kick up on it, and the ball will swing back into the goals," he said.
And it turns out he had a physiological quirk that worked to his advantage.
"I was born with one leg slightly longer than the other, I needed a lot of adjusting and chiropractic work as a young kid because my femur, the way my legs come into my hips, they come in on a on an angle," Johnson said.
"And so, if I take my leg back, my leg goes back on a slight angle as well, it doesn't go straight back.
"So, the way my rotation works to kick the football, it's better for me to kick across the body. My body actually suits the snap kick probably more so than just about anyone."
Stevie J gets his chance to test out the theory
The kick had been perfected. All that remained was an opportunity to try it out in an AFL game.
Despite his proficiency with the snap kick, Johnson didn't use it in an AFL for the first few years of his career out of fear that he could be criticised if he tried it and missed.
But eventually his confidence in his ability to execute the kick overcame the doubts during a game against Carlton at Docklands several years into his career.
It is likely it was the round eight game in 2005 — Johnson's fourth year in the AFL — when he found himself with a set shot opportunity in the left forward pocket.
"I think it was just the perfect spot for me to kick it from. It was 30m out; it was on a reasonably tight angle without being on the boundary," he said.
"It was certainly a spot where most players would have kicked the drop punt and been happy being close to kicking it."
Should he kick a drop punt knowing it was a 50-50 chance, but safe in the knowledge he wouldn't be criticised if he missed?
"Or do I go for this knowing it's a nine out of 10? But if I miss…. yeah, the world might come down on me," he said.
He decided to go for it.
"So, I've gone back to the mark and then I've come back forward, looked at the guy on the mark and turned side on with the goal and the man on the mark," Johnson said.
"And that's probably the point where everyone in the crowd and watching on TV is going 'what the f*** is he doing?'. Like, we haven't seen this before."
Johnson went through his routine, kicked the goal and followed it up minutes later with another set snap shot on his left foot from the opposite pocket.
It was arguably the first time anyone had ever set up to take a shot for goal without directly facing the posts in the 150 year history of the VFL/AFL.
The set snap shot is so common now that we forget how foreign it looked when Johnson took his first kicks at goal while deliberately setting up at right angles to his target.
"I remember there was a there was a little bit said about it (after the game). But there would have been a lot more said about it had I missed," he said.
"I was taking a punt and doing something different. As I said (I) could be looking like, you know, 'this kid's got a bit of high confidence levels, a high opinion of himself and he's trying to do something to look like he's showing off'.
"But that certainly wasn't the case. This had been something, 10,15 years in the making and I was doing what I believed was the percentage play."
Johnson's belief didn't stop criticism from the detractors — particularly as other players began to use the snap kick for set shots.
"When it started catching on and players started doing it, not everyone had done the repetitions, not everyone had honed-in on what their technique needs to look like," he said.
"I was watching what they (the commentators) were watching and almost going, 'you know what, he's kind of got a point because that player is not doing it right'.
"If they knew how to do it right, you'd be able to change the views of these professionals that you were stuck in in their era."
Johnson said he can predict whether or not a player will successfully kick a snap shot by the way they set up and how they're holding the ball.
"A lot of players, if you see them set up with the ball horizontal, you know that they're probably gonna miss to the right of the goals, because that ball will float out a little bit before they make contact with it," he said.
Similarly, he said he sometimes sees players adjust their angle to the goal, which means they will likely miss to the narrow side.
"Whereas I know with how I hold the ball and being at 90 degrees, I've just got to drop the ball, like in the same spot and kick up on it, and the ball will swing back into the goals," he said.
"But if they step to the left, the 90 degrees for them is probably left point post and so they have to guess somewhere between the point of the ball which we're trying to hit the bottom of and the belly of the ball and that's really hard to execute."
Passing on knowledge to other forward stars
The kick — and technique — slowly took over as the preferred shot for goal from acute angles, starting with his Geelong teammates.
"It become something that I got really good at and then you know, clearly, we were having goal kicking comps after training and the other guys were starting to set up exactly the same way and practise it," he said.
"Over the years, (I) certainly taught a lot of lot of players what I try to do technique wise, to make sure you know you can execute it.
"Someone like Paul Chapman was an excellent snap kick. Tom Hawkins was the same, James Podsiadly, you know, obviously all teammates in the forward line with me.
"And then I went to GWS and tried to share a bit of knowledge with those guys and Toby Greene became a great snap, Jeremy Cameron became a great snap.
"Now, they might have become great snap kicks anyway, but I certainly helped refine their techniques."
He said the best current exponent of the snap kick is Hawthorn's Luke Breust.
As to who coined the phrase "the J-Curve", Johnson thinks it was the legendary commentator, Dennis Cometti.
"One day in commentary he said: 'here he is: Stevie Johnson's gone with the J-curve'," he said.
He said he had a sense of pride that something he started is now an accepted part of the game.
"I was the first one to do that, so when I see that, yeah, it kinda makes you feel I guess a little bit special," he said.
"Only because like I'm a footy tragic and I didn't set out to try to do something completely different that changed the game.
"I've just done something that because I had a footy in my hands probably more than any kid in history, I developed something which has now become normal.
"So, the pride would be in having a bit of a legacy in the game you love."
It took 50 years for Johnson's intuitive spark to create a new form of kick in Australian Rules, which raises the question of whether there are any more innovations that could come into the game.
"Yes," Johnson said without hesitation,
"There's another kick. Yeah."
He calls it the "sliced banana".
But that's another story.
AAP
