Kicking footedness and movement discrimination by elite Australian Rules footballers

Kicking a football accurately with a certain velocity over a desired distance is dependent upon the speed of the kicking foot and the quality of contact between the foot and ball. Control of the swinging lower leg is critical to these factors and the overall performance of the kick, and this was assessed in 20 Australian Football League players. Assessment of movement extent discrimination of the swinging leg was made while standing on the other leg. An automated device accurately set a stop plate to five different positions and each subject was asked to swing the leg to the plate, and make a non-visual judgment of the movement extent. Forty forward and forty backward swings of each leg were assessed, and based on a subject's responses, non-parametric signal detection analysis resulted in a movement extent discrimination score. For left leg performance, coach ratings of overall kicking ability were correlated with movement discrimination ability. Left-foot kickers (0.83) had a higher movement discrimination score than right-foot kickers (0.77), and had a significantly higher score on their dominant side, whereas right-footers had no left-right side difference. Rating of kicking ability by coaches also reflected this difference between the dominant leg performance of left- and right-footers. These data showed left-foot kickers to have higher movement discrimination ability with their dominant leg, and this may be related to their on-field kicking ability.