Checkside punt

Is like a banana kick but the opposite way, the checkside punt is a kicking style used in Australian Rules and rugby league football. When kicked, it bends away from the body and is usually used when a set shot for goal is lined up on a narrow angle.

For the true checkside, the ball is held with ends pointing to 2 and 8 o-clock and is kicked more off the outside of the boot with the ball spinning at an opposite direction to the swing of the leg. This enables the ball to have a greater curving effect thus opening up the face of the goals to give a larger goal face.

Australian Rules (Foundation Era)

In the early 1890s, Allen Burns[1], who played with the (then) Victorian Football Association club South Melbourne, was renowned for what seems to be an early version of the banana kick.

The following is taken from newspaper reports of the match between Fitzroy and South Melbourne on Saturday 23 June 1894, that was played in showers of rain, on a very wet and slippery ground, with a very heavy and very wet leather football:

      A mistake by the Fitzroy backs gave Allan [sic] Burns a chance at such an angle the a goal seemed impossible, and his team were urging him not to try; but he took the shot — a forty-yards one — with the posts almost in a line, and, to everyone's amazement and the South's delight, scored a wonderful goal … ^[1]
      In obtaining goals at difficult angles Burns has few rivals on the football field. He has the power of screwing the ball similar to a billiard player. His second goal on Saturday was one of the impossible shots in which it was almost a certainty that the ball would go right past, and the peculiar twist he appeared to get on as the ball darted through is one of those tricks of the game which a man should be able to patent … ^[2]

Australian Rules (Modern Era)

The punt first began to appear in the Victorian Football League in the late 1970s. Use of the kick was first popularised in South Australia in the 1960s by the Sturt Football Club coached by Jack Oatey who encouraged his players in the art of it. He himself was an exponent of the kick decades earlier in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL). As SANFL players began to be recruited to Victoria in large numbers, the kick took on more widespread use at the top level by players such as Craig Bradley. It is now one of the most common techniques for goal-kicking from a narrow angle, and more recently has been used in field kicking with deadly accuracy by players like James Hird, but was most famously used by Peter Daicos

Rugby League

In rugby league, Newcastle Knights half-back Andrew Johns began to pioneer its use mid way through his career, where it was used to confuse the defensive side. He popularised it and became the banana kick's best exponent in the code.

Rugby Union

The banana kick has also been utilised in rugby union, most notably by Carlos Spencer.

Footnotes

1. ^ The Football Season: South Melbourne v. Fitzroy, The Argus, (Monday, 25 June 1894), p.5.
2. ^ The Football Season: South Melbourne v. Fitzroy, The Age, (Monday, 25 June 1894), p.6.