ISLEWORTH, England — Kansas punter Matt Gill, who is from Australia, had his father in attendance for his debut on Sept. 4 against Long Island.
Well, at least it was supposed to be his debut — the Jayhawks’ offense was so effective as to render Gill’s services unnecessary. That made for a “bittersweet” result for the family, as Gill put it.
A larger contingent with two aunts and an uncle was on hand to watch Gill, a former Australian rules football player, make his real first impression on the gridiron the following week against Missouri: “It was nice to punt, but wish we could have got the win there,” Gill said.
And yet more of his family will be in attendance on Saturday for the Union Jack Classic. Gill was able to scrounge up some additional tickets from his teammates to get a group including his parents, sister and cousin to the first FBS football game contested in his father’s home country.
“I think I’m a perfect representation of what the global stage of American football is about,” the freshman said on Wednesday. “I’m Australian playing American football in England at the moment. So it doesn’t get more international than that.”
Gill’s path is unusual. It may no longer be especially rare for Australians to come to the United States and punt — KU has had three of them in a row at that position — but Gill is younger than most, trained at a new Australian Kicking Academy rather than the established Prokick and had some history of interest in American football prior to his arrival, thanks to a sister who introduced him to the sport (and signed him up for a kicking trial).
Time will tell if Gill puts together as good a season for KU as his countryman Finn Lappin had last year, but the Missouri game was a decent start.
“I got out there first drive, and I think as soon as your name gets called, get a punt ready, all the nerves just go away, you go back to something you’ve done probably like 250 kicks in practice, and it’s just rhythm from there,” Gill said.
He put the Tigers deep in their own territory at one point early. A 32-yard punt on fourth-and-33 in the fourth quarter hindered his stat line a bit — four punts, 158 yards — but head coach Lance Leipold still said recently, “For his first college experience, I thought he had a good game.”
“At the end of the day, my job is not to worry about the stats that I finish with, it’s about helping the team,” Gill said. “I thought I had a good second punt, pinned them at the 2, and I thought my execution was pretty good. Yeah, I thought I did my job well.”
It’s easy to see how a strong showing from Gill could influence the result on Saturday against Arizona State. The last game between KU and ASU featured all sorts of special-teams shenanigans, including a fake punt and a blocked field goal.
If the game does go Gill’s way, it might prompt some jokes at the expense of his favorite soccer team (which, apparently, is also that of “quite a few” Jayhawks, he said), if anyone bothers to consider it: “I’m a big Chelsea fan,” he said. “A couple weeks ago I saw something that said if we beat Arizona State in Wembley we’ll have a better record over the past, like, three years than Chelsea have had there.”
Whatever he accomplishes, the Gill brood will be there to cheer him on.
“It’s not easy traveling across the world to do something that is very foreign to you,” he said. “So I think to have that base with my family is just really, really special.”
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