PETER Hudson knew the questions were coming. They pretty much always do when someone's goalkicking radar gets scrambled. "They always resurrect people like me," he said with a chuckle.

And so it was in the MCG stands on Sunday afternoon, that the man with the greatest goalkicking average in history (5.64 a game) was bailed up by exasperated fans of his old club, who had only one thing on their minds.

"I had people coming up to me, 'What do you think, what can be done, blah, blah, blah,' " Hudson said. "It's well and truly being debated around the water coolers, isn't it? The whole thing's a hell of a good story."

The "whole thing" is, of course, the success rate of Hawthorn's current goalkicking goliath, Lance Franklin. He might be leading the race for the Coleman Medal with 70 goals after 15 rounds, but it is the 70 misses in the adjacent columns (56 behinds and 14 complete misses) that nag at Hawk fans. As much as "Buddy" carries their premiership dreams, they know his eccentric left leg could orchestrate their worst nightmare, too.

"The thing we'd all hate to see is a situation where Buddy kicks four goals seven in a grand final instead of seven goals four, and you lose by a goal," Hudson said yesterday. "As a Hawthorn supporter, that's the thing that worries me."

Hudson has worked extensively as a goalkicking troubleshooter, most notably at St Kilda with a wayward Stewart Loewe, and most recently with Essendon's Jay Neagle at Gippsland Power, where son Paul was coaching. He is a huge Franklin fan, and supports the argument that trying to make him too robotic or clinical could tamper with his natural instincts, dulling the gifts that make him special.

"I would in no way think of criticising Buddy Franklin or wanting to tell him how he should do it. I had my day and it's been and gone," Hudson said, pointing to club director Jason Dunstall as a more appropriate mentor. But as coach Alastair Clarkson noted on Sunday evening, the game's third-greatest goalkicker worked with Franklin late last year, and he responded by kicking 2.11.

The Hawks have another kicking ace not so much up their sleeve as on the table, with biomechanist David Rath in his fourth year as a Clarkson assistant coach. A lateral thinker, Rath is something of a guru on the science of kicking.

Hawthorn's gatekeepers had Rath under lock and key yesterday, but in an interview with The Age in 2005 he detailed his thinking on the game's most crucial skill, including that unconventional approaches such as Franklin's - running on an arc with arms and ball mobile - are not necessarily a bad thing.

"I'm very strongly of the opinion that we shouldn't hold the ball over our kicking leg as we run in to kick for goal because ball movement mimics arm movement, which mimics shoulder movement ... (and) if you keep your shoulder still you can't develop power through the upper body, which is crucial to the kick," he said at the time.

"If you look at all good kicks, there is flow and ball movement. We have to set some limits on the amount, but we shouldn't eliminate it because it is an important part of building up rhythm."

Damian Farrow, a skill-acquisition specialist who has worked with Rath at the Australian Institute of Sport, was also at the MCG on Sunday. He found himself directly behind Franklin at times and, his couple of shanks aside, everything seemed normal - he ran on a pronounced arc, kicked with a hook, "but they just wouldn't fade back for him".

Farrow defers to the experts on matters of technique - such as Melbourne Storm kicking coach Kevin Ball, who has worked with several AFL clubs and the Australian Institute of Sport academy - but says there is no reason why Franklin's method could not be adjusted if Hawthorn felt it necessary. Although, not right now.

"You wouldn't change him now (mid-season), but you would certainly be able to make some sort of adjustment to it in the off-season if it was deemed important," Farrow said. "There's enough opportunity in pre-season to make consistent changes to habit."

Franklin's off days - the 2.11 in round 21 last year, this season's 1.7 in round six, a combined 2.9 over rounds 12 and 13 and now Sunday's 4.7 - point to confidence issues, and Farrow agreed that there was a perception that if he "hits them well early" he will be on song. "If he misses a couple that infers he has to change something, and if you keep changing you probably never settle."

Hudson doesn't have much time for mind games, seeing goalkicking as 90% technical and 10% psychological, perhaps even less. He is also a man for a straightforward approach.

"I reckon goalkicking is so much like hitting a golf ball with a driver - if you hit it plumb, it goes a mile and it goes straight, but if you're a bit off, it can go anywhere, left, right, whatever.

"I've always worked very much on a straight-line principal, that everything has got to be in a straight line. Your run-in has to be straight, your dropping of the ball has to be straight, your leg has to be a straight follow-through on the kick."

Hawthorn's conundrum broadens when you consider that Jarryd Roughead can often be Franklin's partner in crime in a literal sense; his accuracy this season is a tick better than Buddy, at a still profligate 52.7%, while in 2007 Franklin returned a 49.3% success rate and Roughead 47.1%.

Dunstall wondered last week if the breadth of modern football's training meant the basics were sometimes not paid the attention they once were; things were certainly different when he would undertake marathon Wednesday night sessions at Glenferrie that amounted to no more than kicking goal after goal after goal.

Hudson says the club would be onto it. "I'd always say that clubs who have a history of missing a lot of goals, the ball is in their court. They should be able to recognise if their goalkicking is not up to standard and do something about it. If they don't, it's on their head really."

But he hopes that whatever is done doesn't change a uniquely gifted player. "I think we've been blessed over the last 30 or 40 years to see some magnificent goalkickers, and it's very evident to me that Buddy is nothing like anybody that's ever been. I don't think I've ever seen a player that can do some of the things he can do.

"I don't think anyone would want to be part of anything that might damage that natural flair."