Michael Reid is the UK Editor of Back Page Lead.

BPL citizen journalist Shane Marden last month wrote about one of his chief bugbears being the poor conversion rate from set shots by specialist AFL goalkickers.

Quite right. Marden rightly dismisses arguments that even golf professionals miss putts and slice drives, and that matchday pressures make our players spray them wide.

Golfers perform under pressure, too, but hours and hours of practice on the fairways and green helps them reduce their waywardness.

Gazelle61 responded to Marden's well-presented piece by saying statistics gathered over the past 20 years showed players now are slightly more accurate.

But as another respondent, 'Frustrated', says, even slightly improved conversion rates are still unacceptable for the elite.

Last week's Round 3, for example, was a goalkicking disaster, with the conversion rate of 49.6 per cent being the lowest recorded for a round. In fact, AFL goalkicking accuracy has plummeted to its lowest level since official statistical analysis began in 1999. In three wayward weeks, players have converted only 55 per cent of all shots.

Watching via satellite as Travis Cloke, Luke Ball and their Collingwood teammates missed several gimmes in losing to the Saints last weekend confirmed my belief that too many AFL players miss too many easy set shots.

They are improved in almost every aspect of the game: strength, endurance, power and skills. But their goalkicking prowess lags.

The following day, watching the English Premier League clash between Hull and Burnley got me thinking further.

Burnley midfielder Graham Alexander twice stepped up to the spot (as pictured above) and expertly converted on both occasions, drawing on a steely nerve and a unique, hugely efficient technique honed over hundreds of hours on the training ground.

The veteran, enjoying his first season of top-flight football at the age of 38, unusually, takes a straight run-up and with minimal back-lift, stabs at the ball, generating considerable power.

On Saturday his boot cut across the pill at the moment of impact, sending it inside-out to the right-hand side of the goal, once low, the next time high, on both occasions leaving the goalkeeper with no chance of intercepting it.

Of course, he mixes them up, sometimes shooting to his left, sometimes rifling it down the middle, almost always finding the back of the net. The two against Hull made it 73 from 77 attempts in his 20-season career.

The impetus for such efficiency was missing a spot kick as a teenager when losing a play-off final with Scunthorpe against Blackpool.

"I missed in the shootout," he told the Daily Mail this week. "I volunteered. I thought, "Great, I'm going to score at Wembley". The keeper saved it. I was in tears after the game. We didn't go up."

Alexander made amends last season, scoring from the spot to give Burnley a 1-0 win against Reading in the play-off semi-final en route to winning promotion to the Premier League.

"There are always nerves. I might look cool on the outside but it's a good job you can't see my insides," he told the Burnley Express.

Admittedly, Alexander and his fellow round-ballers have to kick the ball only a short distance and from directly in front of the goal.

But the vertical target area is much reduced, they have a goalkeeper patrolling the line and must also deal with high-stakes pressure.

Burnley and Hull are fighting for their Premier League survival. Alexander's spot kicks had, potentially, tens of millions of pounds riding on them.

Likewise, in the NFL, field kickers are often shooting from relatively short distances, but they have opponents the size of a small block of flats bearing down on them and the game riding on their attempts.

But back to our profligate AFL men. Why do they miss when they should convert. Surely not for lack of preparation? All clubs have specialist goalkicking coaches who no doubt spend hours analysing techniques and working with players on their execution.

So how do we explain AFL players' failure to improve in this facet of the game to a level commensurate with advances in other areas?

If we can argue that soccer and NFL players are somewhat more efficient in converting from their set shots at goal, might we surmise that kicking a stationary ball off the ground offers a better chance of successfully hitting the target than does kicking a moving ball, albeit one that has travelled only the short distance from hand to boot (and even then, virtually placed on the boot in many instances).

Is it in the players' heads or can their wastefulness be put down to biomechanical, physiological idiosyncrasies associated with the process of kicking a Sherrin.

With absolutely no science to back my theory, I think it might be a little bit of both; matchday pressures make them tense up and abandon the natural rhythms of kicking a footy. Many just don't looked balanced as they are running in. McKenna, Plugger, Dunstall, they all did. Of the modern breed, Akermanis does all the right things; soft hands, relaxed approach. But he misses, too.

Think back to when you were playing kick-to-kick down the park. Apart from the times when you lent back attempting a huge torp and sprayed it wide, most times you would kick it pretty much directly to the mob down the other end.

The natural way to kick a footy is straight.

Or is it? As Alexander has shown in his football code, there is more than one route to goal. The Scotland international has abandoned the standard side-footed technique for his own incredibly effective straight-ahead then left-to-right style off the inside of the foot.

Conversely, maybe our AFL goalkickers should start to kick around the corners (most left-footers do it anyway) to find a more natural feel for the route to goal.

Kicking straight consistently might be about working some new angles.