photo by: Journal-World screenshot

Kansas punter Matt Gill speaks to reporters on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Lawrence.

Last July, Matt Gill moved from Sydney to Melbourne to train in a sport he had never previously played at a newly established punting academy that had not yet produced a player.

By the end of October, Gill was receiving interest from American colleges, and by January he was signed to play at Kansas.

“Never played in a football game ever to now he’s going to open up Week 1 versus LIU,” long snapper Rino Monteforte said.

It was indeed a whirlwind process for Gill over the course of six months: “It happened all quite quickly,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way.” It was not, however, altogether unfamiliar for KU, which has had several Australian punters in a row.

“So we’ve got a routine,” special teams coordinator Taiwo Onatolu said. “It’s just reaching out to the connections down there and then saying, ‘Hey, who do you got?'”

In this case, the connection was between KU special teams analyst Aaron Miller and Tim Gleeson, the former Wyoming and Rutgers punter who used to work with the brand-name Australian punting academy Prokick and is now the proprietor of the AKA. And Gleeson had Gill.

“I think my sister would love if I give her a bit of credit for this,” Gill said.

Gill’s sister, an NFL fan who he said had always dreamed of going to college in the United States, signed him up in May 2024 for a kicking trial by which he might have become part of the long line of Australians making the move to college football. Gill was a Philadelphia Eagles fan himself, with memories of sneaking glances at his laptop to track the score of the 2025 Super Bowl while in business class at school.

But he was happy with Australian rules football, the sport he had grown up playing at a high level in Sydney, and put the trial off — until Gleeson reached out to him the following year, at which point he thought, “You know what, may as well, couldn’t hurt.” So he gave it a try.

“Absolutely loved it from the word go,” he said.

That’s how he found himself relocating to Melbourne for three hours a day of intense training — for three weeks, it was one-on-one, he added, “which is not very common, especially some of the programs coming through Australia. And that was really, really good for me, so I was able to sort of get a head start on everything.”

As evidenced by KU’s recent recruitments of Damon Greaves (directly from Busselton, Australia) and Finn Lappin (as a transfer from McNeese), there is already something of an Australian punter pipeline: “Every year we’ve improved, and if it ain’t broke, right, keep going with it,” Onatolu said. But that doesn’t make the transition from Australian rules to the gridiron trivial by any means. Australian Football League players are capable of a diverse array of kicks, but they don’t necessarily spend time on the one that is most common in the United States.

“In AFL, we don’t really kick spirals,” Gill said. “Spirals aren’t a common thing. We call them torpedoes. It’s a similar sort of kick, but you swipe across and just kind of hope for the best.”

Gill called this “the best advice I ever got”: The AFL punt is “ball to foot,” in the sense that you bring the ball down to your foot with your hand, as opposed to the “foot to ball” opposite style used in American football.

Whatever the case, he took to it quite well.

“I feel like I bring consistency,” Gill said of his game. “I feel like I’ve got a strong leg and I’m able to kick most kicks in the book, so I’m able to just adapt to some areas. Coming from an AFL background, I’m quick thinking on my feet, and able to sort of adapt as scenarios come.”

He would face no bigger adaptation than the transition to the United States, which didn’t take long to arrive. Multiple schools had been interested in Gill, but from his first conversation with Onatolu and analyst Kyle Deween — he called them when they were at a bowling alley for a team bonding activity — it was clear that KU would be able to make him feel at home on the other side of the world.

Even while he was waiting to get over to campus — he came about two or three weeks later than the rest of his teammates — he had plenty of support.

“I reckon with the time difference even, there was about 13 people at Kansas I could text at any time, and by the time I’ve sent the message they were already typing in the chat,” Gill said. “They have been absolutely incredible … I don’t think I would have been able to adapt as well as I have if I didn’t have these staff around.”

Spring practice, Gill said, has been “electric.” He’s a spectator for quite a few of the practice periods, but right now he’s the Jayhawks’ only punter (freshman walk-on Ben Shipley will join over the summer) so he’s getting deployed quite a bit.

“We’re just smart with how many reps he gets,” Onatolu said. “… We always say we got to put him in bubble wrap, really protect him and make sure the guys that are rushing and giving good looks on scout team, they don’t run into him, and obviously once June gets here we get another guy in and we’ll have a two-deep there.”

For Monteforte, a fifth-year senior who previously played at Notre Dame and Cal, it isn’t his first rodeo with a punter fresh out of Australia. He said Gill doesn’t punt like a novice.

“First off, I love the kid,” Monteforte said. “He’s a great teammate, great player, comes to work every single day with a great attitude, wanting to learn more about football, wanting to learn the mindset that it takes to go out there, do your job and perform at a high level. He’s been doing great. If you watch him go out there and punt in the period one day, you would think he’d be playing football for five, six, seven, eight years, maybe. He’s super mature.”

That will serve him well if he indeed gets thrown into action right away. And his family will be there to witness it. He said that his father, grandfather and aunt are coming to Lawrence to see him play in the first two games of the year against LIU and Missouri, and then the whole family — his father is English — is headed to London for the Union Jack Classic at Wembley Stadium.

Gill, who is also a soccer fan, got a “little boost” when he learned about the London game during his recruiting process. But, he said, he was already set on KU regardless.