I’ve seen the ball flight of field goal kicks move from right to left, or draw for a right footed kicker. Similar to a draw that you might see on a golf shot. I understand that various effects related to the spin, like laces biting into the air, cause baseballs footballs to curve. But doesn’t the spin direction of a football changes as it tumbles over? Seems like you shouldn’t be able to draw or fade a field goal kick.
Goal kickers in rugby use this a lot when taking shots from wideout. It’s not only possible, but almost essential to be able to curve the ball a bit to get those shots as the apparent width of the goal posts is so slim that a truly straight kick would be much harder to score from.
Here’s an extreme (albeit wind assisted) example. Carter’s kicking from five metres in from touch, so about 25 to 30 metres to the left of the near goalpost and about 23 metres back from the goalposts. He aims almost to the corner flag and curves it in from there.
Johnathan Thurston, a rugby league kicker, is especially adept at this technique.
Moved to the Game Room.
A placekick in American football probably won’t have enough spin along the long axis of the football to do much – the vast majority, if not all, of the “spin” will be the end-over-end spin along the short axis.
(Punts, on the other hand, do spin along the long axis, and only a badly-punted ball will flip end-over-end.)
There was an amusing example some years ago where the kick was being taken from the extreme right of the field, where Ireland’s usual place-kicker (I misremember who) would have had severe difficulties because of the angle. So the kick was instead taken by Conor O’Shea “because he is a left-footer” as commentator Bill McLaren helpfully explained. At the time I thought this might be an inflammatory expression to use of an Irishman. 