Take a punt on this...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/american-football/articles/cjwd1wnl64go
(for the uninitiated, Darren Bennett had a very successful AFL career with both West Coast and Melbourne...)
In the 1970s, the Patriots had a rep for inadequate kickers and punters. The kickers tended to be straight toe kickers rather than what we called "soccer style." They did get one soccer style kicker, Charlie Gogolak, at the end of his career, but for the most part the Pats were really backwards. A radio talk show (the "Sport Huddle") went over to England to have a contest for "Super Foot," a soccer player who would come over to the USA and get a try out with the Pats. The winner of the contest was a guy named Walker, who didn't do much with his try out, but the runner up was John Smith, who had a long career with the Pats and I think used to an NFL highlight show for the BBC.
After the success of Smith, the radio show tried to find an Aussie rules punter to be "The Kanagaroo Kid" for the Patriots. The Pats gave him a pro-forma tryout and cut him. The staff of the 70rys and 80s (Chuck Fairbanks, Ron Earhardt, Raymond Berry) were very conservative. They could accept a soccer-style kicker because it had already proven successful, but they were not going to innovate with an Aussie rules punter.
