Tommy Warner got off his plane in Connecticut last week and, as far as his eyes could see, was all the evidence he was not in Australia anymore.
“It was snow everywhere,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was just white. It can get cold in Australia, but we don’t really live in snow.”
Warner has journeyed 10,000 miles from home to continue his career as an American football punter at UConn, one of the wave of former Australian Rules Football players to make the transition from the semi-organized chaos of their native land’s favorite game to dropping footballs inside the opponents’ 20-yard line for fun and profit in the United States.
“I played Australian football, which is our national code and by far our biggest sport, and I played that my whole life,” Warner said. “Started very young, played at local clubs, played for my school and for some competitive teams. It’s something I pursued, and once I realized that wasn’t going anywhere, my ultimate goal was to play professionally, I found out about all these Australian punters who have been coming over and getting an education. I looked into it and I thought, ‘I’ll give this a go.’”
Warner trained for about a year and a half with The Gridiron Company, where Australian Rule players learn the art of kicking, American style, and with instructors like Darren Bennett, who became the first Aussie to punt in the NFL in the 1990s, and Saverio Rocca, who came over in the 2000s. Warner landed at Northwest Missouri State, where he punted for a 40.2-yard average as a freshman in 2025, a long of 57, dropping 12 of 46 kicks inside the opponents’ 20-yard line.
If you are old enough to remember the birth of ESPN in the early 1980s, you remember that before the Bristol-based worldwide leader had the rights to broadcast mainstream U.S. sports, they aired Australian Rules Football all hours of the day and night and for a time it was a mini-cultural phenomenon. It’s a game with 18 players on a side, a huge oval pitch, with a ball shaped similar to an American football, and it combines elements of soccer, rugby and U.S. football all in one. Players can use any part of their body to move the ball, but often pass to teammates by kicking, so they learn to punt the ball with purpose, accuracy and on the run.
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“It’s such a unique sport,” Warner said, “it’s got nothing similar to it around the world.”
It translates well. Former AFL players have won seven of the last 10 Ray Guy Awards for top punter in the nation, and last season nearly half of the FBS teams (61) used Australian punters. The Seahawks’ Michael Dickson will rep The Land Down Under next week in the Super Bowl.
“The Australian football is a little bit bigger, a little bit fatter, and you can kick it a little bit further.” said Warner, 6 feet 3 and 199 pounds. “The way we kick the ball, end over end, where you get the ball nose down and you get that back to front rotation, its much easier than hitting it spiral. And you have to kick it to your teammates, it’s very important that you be accurate in Australian football and hit a target, whilst moving, or stationary.
“There are times in a game where you need to kick it spiral for distance, so in American punting you need to learn that as well, so important, the hang time.
“But the way we kick it, end over end, it’s accurate, reliable, we can actually put it anywhere we want. Especially if we’re closer in, like a ‘pooch’ punt. Most of the time we should be able to get it inside the 10 because we just have that natural touch where we know where the ball is going to land, because our whole life we’ve been kicking to targets.”
UConn got in on the trend because new special teams coach Pat Cashmore had seen Warner punt five times for a 46.2 yard average, including a 50-yarder and two downed inside the 20, for Division II Northwest Missouri State late last season in Kansas City, Kan. “Coach Cashmore was actually watching in the stands because he used to coach Pittsburg State (the opponent) and he said I stood out.’”
Through Bennett, who was advising Warner, contact was made as Warner entered the transfer portal. He was one of 64 new players to sign with UConn, launching the new chapter under Jason Candle.
“Everyone is completely new, everyone’s a bit like me,” Warner said. “Whereas the last place I came in, I was a bit of an outsider, here we’re all on the same page. I met with Coach Candle my first day here and he was great, really happy and looking forward to it. There is so much to learn about one another and really grow as a team. We’ve been doing these lifts and workouts and I can tell already people are starting to click. It’s a whole new beginning for all of us.”
Warner’s family has owned a nursery — raising plants and trees for 112 years and four generations — outside Melbourne. He’s 21, with three years eligibility, and will major in environmental studies at UConn, to bring expertise to the family business one day. And yes, the UConn brand did have reach in Australia.
“I did know about UConn, their logo always stood out to me, I thought it was one of the cool ones,” Warner said. “When I found out UConn was interested, I was ecstatic, because I did know about them and I knew it was really a fantastic school.”
And now Tommy Warner has learned it snows here, sometimes a lot.
More for your Sunday Read:
Bill Belichick snubbed by Pro Football Hall of Fame in first year of eligibility, report says
Unpacking ‘Canton-gate’
This week’s snubbing of Bill Belichick, the most successful head coach in pro football history, in his first year of eligibility is an embarrassment for the Hall of Fame, and it’s the offshoot of a flawed process created by its own board of directors with recent changes. It’s always been hard to get in on the first ballot because of the backlog; now it’s even harder.
A couple of years ago, the waiting period for coaches was reduced from five years to one. This is not a great idea, unless everyone is on board with the possibility of inducting coaches who are still active, as the Naismith Hall of Fame does. Belichick, though 73, is still coaching, albeit college football, and it would be no surprise if he coached in the NFL again.
Second, contributors (coaches, executives, owners) were moved from a separate process onto the ballot with senior players. Terrible idea. The selectors, and to be clear, I am not involved, can only vote for three candidates, so it presented a choice between players who have been retired and waiting many years and may be running out of time, or a coach on his first ballot who is not, in fact, really retired. With this in mind, it’s understandable that some would choose to vote for overdue players, but this is overthinking it.
This is not a transparent process. If some voted against Belichick because of “spygate,” they’re wrong-headed. That kind of thing has gone on in football for generations, probably still does. If some were against him strictly because he could still return to the NFL, this is also wrong. The rules say he is eligible, and when someone this obviously worthy appears on the ballot the timing should not matter, you check the box.
Besides, Joe Gibbs returned to coaching years after he was enshrined in Canton, and the world didn’t stop rotating on its axis.
So I would change, rescind or clarify a few of things with this process. Coaches should be in their own category, voted on separately, or at least with other contributors. And I would either go back to the five-year wait period, so a coach’s body of work is complete, or else make it clear that this issue is now irrelevant.
In any event, Belichick — and whoever thought he’d become a sympathetic figure — will be inducted sooner than later. … And so should Eli Manning.
Dom Amore: UConn repeats as champs of CT Ice, a tournament that’s worth defending
Sunday short takes
*Former UConn quarterback Joe Fagnano completed all five of his passes for 38 yards in the East-West Shrine Bowl this week. He was sacked twice, once by Duke’s Wesley Williams in the end zone resulting in a fumble and TD for the East, but then Fagnano led the West down the field for the winning score in the 21-17 victory. Skyler Bell played for the West, but did not catch a pass.
*Former UConn tight end Justin Joly was an all-ACC pick at NC State and played in the Senior Bowl.
*Lori Runksmeier has had a remarkably productive tenure as Eastern Connecticut’s athletic director, with the addition of varsity sports, upgraded facilities, success in the Little East Conference on the field and in academics and the 2022 Division III baseball championship. On Jan. 15, Runksmeier, who will retire on April 1, was presented the Richard A. Rasmussen Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Association of Division III Athletics Administrators at the NCAA convention in Washington, D.C. Runksmeier has worked in D-III for 35 years, coming to ECSU in 2015, and was recognized for “significant contributions to Division III athletics.”
*Speaking of Halls of Fame, if catcher Buster Posey, on next year’s baseball ballot, is first-ballot cinch, that’s fine by me. But then Thurman Munson should move to the top of the agenda when the appropriate veterans committee meets again.
*The look on Allie Ziebell’s face after she hit her 10th 3-pointer Wednesday night as her teammates kept shoving her in celebration, falls under the heading of “Why we watch sports.”
*Cancel your plans for Wednesday. The Yard Goats will be naming a new manager.
*The way college hockey tournament metrics are evolving, the Boston College game vs. UConn at PeoplesBank on Feb. 21 could have make-or-break implications. Huge crowd expected; hearing the lower bowl is already sold out.
*UConn’s Christian Haynes, a second-round draft pick, had a tough, injury-plagued second year on the offensive line for the Seahawks. He was inactive for the NFC Championship game.
*Jim Calhoun will be at Reynolds Subaru, 268 Hamburg Road in Lyme on Feb. 7 from noon to 2 p.m., signing books for those who donate nonperishable foods for area food banks. The first 150 to bring $10 or more in nonperishables receive a free, signed book. Calhoun began his coaching career at Old Lyme High in 1969, and will reunite there with some of his former players still in the area.
Whalers are still the thing for the. Carolina something-or-others.
Last word
Another Carolina Hurricanes “Whalers Night” came and went this week, as the franchise changed the visuals on its X account to Whalers colors and logos. Really? Has there ever been a franchise in any sport so tethered for so long to a previous identity in another city as the ‘Canes are to your Hartford Whalers? The old brand is still stronger than what they’ve been able to established since 1997? They should just keep the logo fulltime and call themselves the “Hertford Whalers.”