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Wallabies fail to account for wrong option in Bledisloe loss to New Zealand
By Wayne Smith
August 25, 2009
Of all the many worrying aspects of the Wallabies' one-point loss to New Zealand in Sydney, perhaps the most disturbing is their failure to set up for a drop goal.
After Dan Carter steered over his nerveless penalty goal shot to put the All Blacks in front 19-18 with less than two minutes to play, it appears everyone except the Wallabies were thinking thinking "field goal".
Initially it seemed that captain George Smith was switched on to the possibility, as he thundered straight towards the posts after the All Blacks astonishingly turned over the ball not once but twice during this tiny sliver of time. But no.
"At that stage, I was looking at where their defence was and seeing if there was an opportunity to spread it wide or get an overlap," Smith said. "It wasn't intentional to go through the midfield."
Smith assumed "the directors", as he called them, would attend to the big picture. "As a forward, you're more looking at making a dent in the defensive line than consciously setting up for the directors to pot that field goal."
Trouble was, there was only one "director" left on the field when Berrick Barnes was replaced at half-time after taking a head knock - Matt Giteau. And he wasn't thinking drop goal either.
http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,...-32464,00.html