The energetic 25-year-old burst onto the AFL scene with 13 possessions and seven marks, but spoiled his game with a return of 1.3 in a game the Crows lost by just 12 points.
“My housemate still has the little frame from the back of the newspaper that said: ‘Nick Gill’s kicking lesson’, so it wasn’t a great start as far as things be remembered for in your first game,” Gill said.
“It’s up in what’s called the ‘arena’ in our house, which is basically a garage with a ping-pong table in it, so I let him have a laugh and hang it on me.
“Hopefully, I can turn that around in good conditions at the Telstra Dome this week.”
Gill is a journeyman of the AFL, having spent time at Melbourne, North Melbourne, Port Melbourne and SANFL club North Adelaide, before being drafted by Adelaide at the end of 2006 and finally achieving his dream of playing AFL football.
“It has been a long journey and during the week we were reading up on some interesting statistics in those AFL record compilations,” Gill said.
“I can’t remember who it was, but there was someone who had become the only player in history to average less than five possessions in his first 50 games.
“I was heading towards being the only guy to have three AFL clubs and play no games, so it was a real relief to actually be able to get out there and play an AFL game.”
Gill played each of the remaining six games last season, including the elimination final, and was poised to add to his games tally in 2008.
But an injury-interrupted pre-season flowed into the regular season and the comical forward known as ‘Emu’ was sidelined until after the mid-year break.
He returned to the Crows' line-up in round 13 and will play his sixth game of the year on Saturday night.
“Obviously, starting out pretty poorly and spending five-and-a-half months off the track, I was getting pretty frustrated,” Gill said.
“I’ve only got a one-year contract and, the reality is, if you don’t perform they club will be looking at reviewing it. A guy of my age has to try and hold onto what he’s got, but luckily things have turned around.
“It’s good to be back in the side and, hopefully, I can string together a few all right games towards the end of the season.”
Gill spent a lot of time over the summer working on his goal kicking and this season is shooting at 50 per cent.
Last week he kicked 2.0 but Gill knows there’s plenty of work to be done, citing his return of 1.3 against Carlton the week before.
“I have spent a lot of time on my goal kicking and, last year in particular, [assistant coach] David Noble and I did a lot of work on it one-on-one,” Gill said.
“Even to this day, I still have Nobes’ words ringing in my head. Nobes used to stop me when I didn’t get my run-up right and I’d have to go back and start again. On the weekend, I was going for a long shot outside 50m and I stuttered on the run-up.
“I kept going, but I heard Nobes’ voice saying, ‘Stop, go back’.”
The high-leaping big man said the Crows had also sought advice from rugby union coaches during the pre-season to help with their goal kicking accuracy.
“We had to line up at goal wearing headphones with different sounds playing through the ear pieces. You could have music, someone yelling at you or the crowd noise,” he said.
“There were other things you had to do like march in towards goal or sing a song out loud, so there were some interesting tactics and I’m sure some of the boys still have certain tunes playing in there head when they line up for goal now.”
