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It’s the very early hours of October 31, 1999. Rugby fans around Australia are mixing the euphoria of the unexpected brilliance with the need to remain quiet and not wake up the rest of the house. Muffled excitement, essentially.
And then came the ‘did that really just happen?’ moment.
Wallabies flyhalf Stephen Larkham potted a drop goal from 48 metres to break a 21-all deadlock against South Africa at Twickenham in London, in the second half of extra time in the 1999 Rugby World Cup Semi-Final.
Matthew Burke would kick his eighth penalty goal just a few minutes later to seal the win, and the Wallabies would go on to beat France 35-12 in the Final the following week in Cardiff.
‘But how – Larkham has never kicked a drop goal in his life?’ we asked ourselves rhetorically, in the absence of anyone to answer the question. The question stood even among gatherings of fans.
More than fifteen years on, and with the invitation to embellish as much as he’d like right there in front of him, Larkham still grins when describing the kick in flight.
“It was an ugly drop out of the hand,” Larkham tells me.
“The ball’s tilted like that [motions a terrible angle, probably not even 45 degrees], and I’ve hit it and it started to hook really badly – it started outside the right post and started to go past the left post – but then it squared up and went straight through.
“And that’s why I was a little bit amazed, I was like, ‘oh my God, it’s over’.
“It was a sweet kick!” Larkham finishes.
The way he tells it is genuinely funny.
It wasn’t the best kick off the boot, but that was always part of the plan, right? There hadn’t been a try scored in the game to that point, so why wouldn’t he think about taking a drop goal?
Well, there was good reason for that, too.
“Coming into the sheds at full time, Tim Lane [Wallabies assistant coach] said to me, ‘if you get a chance to take a field goal, take it,’ because he’s obviously thinking three points could win this. And I was sort of oblivious about it: ‘Yeah alright. It’s not in my gameplan; I don’t do that sort of stuff. But alright.’
At this point, I mention that he’d never kicked a drop goal in his provincial or international career.
“I’d attempted a few,” Larkham says, that grin returning.
“I did do all the kickoffs, though,” he says, and adds, “I did know how to drop kick,” as if to offer up the ultimate show of confidence in such a pressure moment.
How hard could it be?
“But we had actually been practising them all week, because Jannie [de Beer, Springboks flyhalf] had broken the record the week before [kicking five drop goals in the Quarter Final against England]. We were literally practicing them every day at training, and screaming out ‘JANNIE DE BEER!’ It was quite funny.
“And we got into that second half of extra time, and I very conscious of playing field position, because ‘Burkey’ was on fire with his goal-kicking, and so if we could get a penalty in their half, it was pretty much three points.
“We won the lineout, crashed ‘Greysie’ up [Nathan Grey, who had replaced Tim Horan], I got the ball on the second phase, and there wasn’t a lot on. I think there was only one person outside me.
“So I was looking for the corners, but they’d just brought in that law where if you kicked the ball dead in general play, it comes back for a scrum; but if you kick it dead from a drop goal attempt, it still comes back to the 22.
“So that was in my head as well; I knew I couldn’t kick it for the corners in case it went dead, so [the drop goal] was just an option to get it back from the 22 and reset.
“And I just remember in my head, ‘yeah, I’ll just kick this dead, and we’ll go again’,” Larkham explains.
Yes gang, you’ve read that correctly. The greatest drop goal in the history of Australian rugby – the one that prompted television commercials at the time, and is still celebrated at Brumbies training on the odd occasion Larkham, the current coach, lands one – was… an accident!
No That’s not how the story was supposed to be! It was supposed to be perfectly scripted, the ‘everything I’ve ever worked for in my entire life led to this’ moment. Not an accident.
No! It can’t be.
But it was an accident. Like all great moments, things often happened completely differently to how they’re remembered.
Larkham kicked one more drop goal in Tests, against South Africa in Brisbane in 2006, and even admitting to having plenty of shots at Canberra Stadium alone, only ever landed one for the Brumbies, against the Crusaders in 2007, in his very last home game.
“I had a lot of shots since [1999] and particularly over in Japan. Playing for Ricoh over there – and I was playing fullback over there – I would’ve had at least 30 shots in competition.
“I didn’t hit one.
“So there was this reputation that I could hit field goals, but I couldn’t hit one.
“The [overall] record’s not too bad – it’s above zero…”
For a player of his immense talent, it’s almost ironic that Larkham’s drop goal strike rate was as dismal as it was. But thank God he landed that one that counted back in 1999.
Of course, despite the fact that luck played a major part, it’s worth thinking about the courage it took from a guy who’d never kicked a drop goal before to take that shot from 48 metres out.
And refreshingly, even though he’s responsible for what is essentially one of the best moments in rugby history, Stephen Larkham remains extremely humble about what he achieved in that instant.
But let’s all just agree that the legendary moment as we know it doesn’t need too much truth getting in the way, okay?
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