World Footy News

As young Gaelic stars continue to be drawn into the front end of the AFL system, aging veterans are moving out the other end and on to the NFL retirement plan circuit as punters. Sav Rocca today confirmed that he had been successful in making the final 53-man roster for the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. This sets the stage for Rocca’s arrival in the first NFL game of the year to be heralded in the media across the U.S as the oldest rookie ever to take the field.

Rocca was keen to make the move to NFL at the end of his last AFL season in 2006 and was initially linked with the Buffalo Bills for a trial. The Bills didn’t take Rocca on, but a last minute audition after a management swap saw Rocca shopped to the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles incumbent punter, Dirk Johnson had come off a poor punting year and the Eagles were looking to either inspire Johnson to greater efforts or replace him with a better option.

In January the Eagles signed Rocca to their preseason roster to compete for the position with Johnson. Early reports coming out of Philly were that Rocca was hitting the dome roof of the indoor practice facility. Rocca and Johnson went through an intense side by side preseason camp where Rocca impressed, but so too did Johnson, who appeared to have found some much longer distance over the offseason. Additionally Rocca was to try out for the position of holder for place kicks, again competing with Johnson who had to be replaced by a specialist holder during the previous season. Rumours abounded on discussion boards and in various media that the kicker, David Akers was happier with Rocca doing that job.

Both punters were to continue competing in four preseason games, which again seemed on the surface too close to call a clear winner – but Rocca did seem to have the edge. Coming into the last preseason game against the New York Jets who featured fellow retired Geelong veteran Ben Graham as their punter it seemed Rocca’s job to lose. Rocca appeared to make a mess of holding for two of Akers field goal attempts - one possibly a bad snap from the long snapper and the other seeing Rocca failing to have the laces out for Akers to make best contact on a field goal attempt that went wide. Johnson’s punts were certainly of greater distance that Rocca’s in the first half of that game but Rocca impressed with some nice drop punt (or pooch punts) the were fair caught deep in the Jets defensive zone.

With only a few days to go before the final roster cuts many still thought Johnson would hold on to his job and the highly fancied Eagles would not take a chance on the big Aussie punter. Rocca revealed on SEN radio this morning that he had in fact been confirmed as the punter for the Eagles. Johnson had called Rocca to confirm that he (Johnson) had been cut and that he wished Rocca luck with his new job. The coach later confirmed that Rocca had the job at the Eagles owner’s residence at a BBQ for the Eagles players. Rocca will be paid about $270,000 US dollars for his rookie season as punter and will be on a three-year non guaranteed contract.