But it hasn't always happened. Sure the top AFL talent in Australia had a casual kick, but the camp's focus has traditionally been on how quick can they run or how high can they jump?

It's never been, how well can they kick? Until this year.

On Thursday morning the 70 players at this year's camp headed out to the fields at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Followed by a host of AFL club recruiters and almost all of the 16 head coaches, the first kicking assessment started.

It went like this.

The player testing starts facing away from six targets. He received a handball on the run, with the instruction to turn around and either kick short left or right (20m), middle left or right (30m) and long left or right (40m).

Each target is two metres wide and points are given out of five for how close the kick is to the target, with the best possible score 30 for six kicks.

The concept is to test players' kicking accuracy under pressure.

In the new world of tactical zoning and tight grand finals, it's crucial.

If St Kilda had been able to kick under pressure, it might have well won this year's premiership.

Recruiting managers have been after a test like this for years to add to a program which already features the vertical jump, 20m sprint and 3km trial.

So former Collingwood champion Nathan Buckley designed a test.

''This test may not be here next year, there might be something better and we hope that there is because we want to make sure that whatever is in place is going to separate the great kicks from the poorer kicks,'' Buckley said.

''But it's the beginning of what we'd like to see continue in terms of measuring skills in the game.''

For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times