The most common style of kicking seen in today's game, principally because of its superior accuracy, is the drop punt, where the ball is dropped from the hands down, almost to the ground, to be kicked so that the ball rotates in a reverse end over end motion as it travels through the air.
There is also the "snap", which is almost the same as a checkside punt, except that it is kicked off the inside of the foot and curves in the opposite direction.
In modern Australian rules football, the drop punt is the most common method of kicking the ball.
Jack Dyer is generally credited with inventing the drop punt during his playing days with the Richmond Football Club in the 1930s.
The kick may still be seen when a player needs additional distance or when a game is played in wet weather and forward movement by conventional methods is more difficult as a result.
The following is taken from newspaper reports of the match between Fitzroy and South Melbourne on Saturday 23 June 1894, which was played in showers of rain, on a very wet and slippery ground, with a very heavy and very wet leather football: A mistake by the Fitzroy backs gave Allan [sic] Burns a chance at such an angle that a goal seemed impossible, and his team were urging him not to try; but he took the shot—a forty-yards one—with the posts almost in a line, and, to everyone's amazement and the South's delight, scored a wonderful goal … [6] In obtaining goals at difficult angles Burns has few rivals on the football field.
His second goal on Saturday was one of the impossible shots in which it was almost a certainty that the ball would go right past, and the peculiar twist he appeared to get on as the ball darted through is one of those tricks of the game which a man should be able to patent … [7] Also, c.1908, there was Fitzroy and Essendon's Paddy Shea: Also, in the mid-1940s, the Tasmanian footballer Ted Collis, who played with Hawthorn, in 1946: Sporting journalist Keith Butler photographed and wrote about Lindsay Head's use of the kick in 1959.
[5] Other players that used the kick effectively were Blair Campbell, Peter Daicos, and, more recently, Eddie Betts.