All Blacks: Damian McKenzie reveals the secret behind the smile in his goal-kicking routine
All Blacks and Chiefs fly-half Damian McKenzie.
All Blacks fly-half Damian McKenzie has explained how he settled on his popular goal-kicking routine which has made him one of the game’s best players off the tee.
The 29-year-old has impressed with his goal-kicking in recent seasons and he has been the leading points scorer for consecutive Super Rugby Pacific campaigns with the Chiefs in 2023 and 2024.
A set part of his goal-kicking routine is the smile he delivers before striking the ball – which he has said in the past is something that helps him relax when he lines up a shot at goal.
However, McKenzie has now revealed on The Aotearoa Rugby Pod how it started and when they asked him to reveal the reason for the smile, he replied: “Nah, it was a bit of a sports-like stuff. When I first started playing professionally I had a man by the name of David Galbraith (sports psychologist) down at the Chiefs. My kicking wasn’t going too bad.
‘Embrace the moment’
“He sort of thought, what do you find the most with kicking? What’s the hardest? I said, obviously a lot of pressure and he said, why don’t you try smiling before a kick? Try and help yourself relax and just embrace the moment.
“It’s something I’ve always done from now on. It got me into a little bit of trouble two weeks ago, three weeks ago. But it’s something I’ve always had as a bit of a process with my kicking.”
The trouble McKenzie refers to is the incident in the All Blacks‘ first Test against England when he was timed out while lining up a shot at goal.
Although that encounter went down to the wire, being timed out did not impact the end result as the All Blacks eventually clinched a narrow 16-15 victory in Dunedin.
After that, New Zealand Rugby introduced a shot clock on the big screen for the second Test with England at Eden Park in Auckland and said that will also be in place for all New Zealand’s home Tests in 2024.
McKenzie admitted that the shot clock was of great help to him as a goal-kicker.
“It wasn’t ideal (being timed out),” he said. “But I guess wherever you travel away it’s… I could have done with that a couple of weeks ago. No, it’s definitely helped.”
World Rugby introduced the shot clock last year to cut out time wasting and McKenzie revealed that more planning has gone into his goal-kicking routine since then.
“Yeah, it’s something that I’ve obviously put a little bit more emphasis on, is the shot clock around the kicking,” he explained.
Not had issues with the shot clock
“So it’s something I’ve never really had too much of an issue with. But I don’t really count in my head how long I’ve been kicking.
“I’ve got my process, which nine times out of ten is under the allowed time. I guess it was nice to have a shot clock because then you’ve got a bit more of an idea. I kind of look at it as a basketball player.”
When asked if he heard the referee (Nika Amashukeli) saying anything to him in the build-up to that kick in Dunedin, McKenzie said: “There was… Yeah, I heard something the ref said, but not clearly. And then I was about to walk into my kick process and then sort of blow up.
“So yeah, I don’t point the finger or blame anyone else but myself. I don’t think my process was any longer than the previous kicks, but I guess he’s just ruling on what he believes is the time.
“So I was just fortunate enough it didn’t come back to haunt me.”
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