Aussies put best foot forward

They grew up playing Aussie rules football. Now they're NFL punters who claim that Aussies rule.
"There's more and more Australians heading over," says Darren Bennett, the two-time Pro Bowl choice who was born in Sydney, educated in Perth and punts for the Minnesota Vikings after nine years with the San Diego Chargers.
The wave of incoming fourth-down specialists isn't exactly tidal, yet non-native kickers such as Pete Gogolak (Hungary), Jan Stenerud (Norway), Garo Yepremian (Cyprus), Gary Anderson (South Africa) and Morten Andersen (Denmark) turned soccer backgrounds into long and successful NFL careers.
Mat McBriar seems to have secured a position with the Dallas Cowboys, doubling the ranks of punters from Down Under. Nathan Chapman's chances of making it a threesome look slim, though he could end up on the Green Bay Packers practice squad.
The adjustment to a different ball and the sequence of taking the snap and executing the punt with pressure coming isn't easy, even for players like Chapman, who played American rules football in Australia last year for the Queens land Rangers and was named the Gridiron League's outstanding special-teams player. The Aussie game, in which players kick on the run, builds strong legs but not the technical prowess and directional skills required in the NFL.
"It's such a fine process of mechanics," says Chapman, who averaged 38 yards on three punts in Green Bay's second preseason game. "It's nice to stand out here at practice and kick a ball when there's no one around, but it's when everyone's rushing at you that you need to be switched on in the mind."
Green Bay's loss of Josh Bidwell as a free agent to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers set off the club's round of auditions, and Chapman, while more than a curiosity, wasn't ever the leading candidate. The Packers gambled in the April draft and traded up to select B.J. Sander in the third round but have been disappointed in his performance. They signed 15-year veteran Bryan Barker this week after auditioning several other punting elders.
Bennett says Chapman needs to stay patient and continue to hone his game. There's generally a lost year involved in the search for steady work.
Consider McBriar. Bennett helped hook him up with a former Chargers coach, June Jones, and McBriar played for Jones at Hawaii for three years. Last season he went to training camp with the Denver Broncos, was traded to the Seattle Seahawks and gained enough of a reputation before his release to get a look from Dallas.
"I spent the first year on practice squad, and it was probably the best thing that happened to me," Bennett says. "I was 29 at the time, and I said to coach (Bobby) Ross, 'I'm too old to be on practice squad.' He said, 'you can punt until you're 40.' Ten years later, he was right."

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