WE recently watched Ron Barassi's Top 31 Players video which must have been made in 1992-93. You were named No. 1 player. I can't remember who was in that list, but I would have thought Wayne Carey would have made his way into that now, and maybe Nathan Buckley. WHEN a player is cornered on the boundary line, quite often they see their only option is to handball out of bounds and hope they don't get pinged. This has proven to be quite costly.
Some players just panic and handpass it straight over the boundary line.
If you head on an angle along the line, and handpass it over the line, as long as the ball is going in a forward direction you're never going to get free-kicked. As you say, if you run along the boundary line and run over as you're being tackled, the same principle applies. Yours is a good observation. With Alastair Lynch, Daniel Bradshaw, and Justin Leppitsch all sharing up forward, there seems to be a lack of stability or confidence in the forward plan. That really is the lot of the modern forward line.