The Northern Knights’ Josh Caddy won the inaugural handball test with Gippsland Power dynamo Jed Lamb taking out the kicking drill and setting a new combine record in the process.
Lloyd developed the test over the course of the past year in an effort to give recruiters greater insight into which draft hopefuls have the cleaner hand skills under pressure.
Run along the same basic principles as the kicking drill, each player has three balls rolled and three balls kicked at them by Lloyd, with the former Bomber barking out one of six short, medium or long-range targets on the left or right to hit.
“I was pretty happy with it,” Lloyd said of the first running of the test.
“Obviously there can be a tiny margin for error with my kicking, having been out of the game for a year, but players like Josh who won the test will make a poor kick into a good one.
“Nothing’s perfect in a game of footy.”
Each participant is filmed during their evaluation so recruiters can go back and see how they coped with a low ball or a bad bounce rather than just relying on the raw scoring data.
With plenty of AFL recruiters watching on, Caddy agreed there was plenty on the line, but said he couldn’t afford to let those thoughts creep in when he was taking the test.
“You just get in a zone like if you’re playing a game of footy,” Caddy said.
“You just concentrate on the footy and where you’ve got to give it. I’m not sure about all the other boys, but I was just trying to concentrate on the footy.
“It was a really good test for the clubs to be able to gauge how clean your hands are in pressure situations. Footy’s a pressure game and everything’s not perfect so it gives them a really good opportunity to see how you are under that pressure and to see how you deliver.”
Lamb is well known at TAC Cup level for his flamboyantly coloured boots, but having kicked 80 goals for the Power over the past two seasons it wasn’t just his footwear that caught the eye in Canberra.
“Obviously I wear pretty bright boots so everyone’s watching me, but it was great to kick well out there,” Lamb said.
Lloyd said Lamb’s performance reinforced the validity of the test developed by Buckley and run for the first time last year in very tricky, windy conditions.
“Jed is dynamic around goals and [the test] just confirms who the best kicks are,” Lloyd said.
“At 97 per cent, that’s elite kicking, which is such a crucial part of the game now and he’s nailed it.”
