Damon Greaves certainly didn’t start the Aussie takeover of the Colorado special teams. And the influx of big-legged athletes from Australia across college football began long before Greaves packed his bags for Boulder.
The latest in what now is almost a decade-long parade of Buffaloes kickers from Down Under, Greaves acquitted himself well during his CU debut in last week’s season-opening loss against Georgia Tech.
Like just about every one of the omnipresent kickers and punters from Australia dotting college football rosters, Greaves is a former Australian rules football player chasing his professional dreams in America. He hopes to continue his solid start on Saturday when the Buffs look for their first win of the season against Delaware (1:30 p.m., Fox).
“I was just another athlete,” said Greaves, who appeared in 10 games as a professional over two seasons of Australian rules football. “I suppose any professional sport, no matter what sport it is, it’s pretty hard to get to the top level. I was able to race that with one sport back over in Australia with Aussie rules. My time finished up there, and I could’ve kept going there, but I found an opportunity like this was, one, a good experience, and two, just another opportunity to potentially, hopefully, make that next level.”
When former kicker James Stefanou joined the Buffs as a 30-year old freshman in 2017, he became the first Australian-born player to play for Colorado. In the nine seasons beginning with 2017, only one CU roster (2022) hasn’t featured an Australian kicker or punter.
Stefanou played four seasons through 2020, a year that also marked the start of Australian Josh Watts’ two-year stint as the Buffs’ punter. Mark Vassett was CU’s punter during the program’s first two seasons under head coach Deion Sanders before ceding the job to his fellow countryman Greaves, a transfer from Kansas.
CU’s infusion of new mates from Australia is in line with the trend in college football. Both punters during last week’s Thursday night prime time showcase on ESPN between Cincinnati and Nebraska hailed from Australia. Two Australians emerged from the NFL preseason with starting jobs — Michael Dickson (Seattle) and Tory Taylor (Chicago) — while two others were released recently (Matt Hayball, Cameron Johnston).
Like Greaves, any of those seeking their kicking fortunes in the States are alums of ProKick Australia, an elite program designed to turn lifelong soccer and Australian rules players into premier kickers in American football. The Australian rules game features specialized kicking — think of basketball-like passing, except made with feet on a football field — that translates well to punters aiming for the sideline at the five-yard line.
Greaves averaged 45.0 yards on five punts in his CU debut, putting three inside the 20-yard line. That included pinning Georgia Tech at its own two-yard line on Greaves’ second punt with CU.
“For Aussies, punting is a natural thing for us,” Greaves said. “The Aussie rules game we play, the way we move the ball around is by punting it. Like I mentioned earlier, a few months ago, we grew up punting it, you guys grew up throwing it. So it’s a natural thing for us. The progression of ProKick, an organization that’s pretty well known throughout the college dynamic. They’ve made a great impact and had a lot of successful punters college levels and through the NFL level as well. This was maybe another way to get to the professional level. It was just an attractive experience for me to do.”
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