Samoa hero Stephen Crichton’s match-winning drop goal was a career first - as he’d been banned from even attempting them with his club.
The Penrith star iced a pressure 84th-minute kick in Golden Point extra-time to leave World Cup semi-final opponents England broken. It put tier-two Samoa - the tiny nation of just 200,000 people - into a first-ever World Cup final. But Crichton, 22, admitted: “I’ve never hit one before.
“I was zero from four (in the NRL)! The Penrith boys never let me do it again. But hopefully, the boys are watching and I get my licence back! I thought I hit it short. But just watching the ref and seeing what he was going to do I knew and then all the emotion hit me. I got emotional then as it takes a lot to put our little country on the map. I’m really proud of the boys.”
Crichton had already scored two tries and kicked three goals in a brilliant performance. The last time he toured the UK it was with the 2018 Australian Schoolboys side that suffered a 2-0 series defeat against Jack Welsby-inspired England Academy. But Welsby endured a torrid time on Saturday and Crichton, who turned down the Kangaroos to represent the country of his birth, came to the fore.
He had ‘for my people’ written on his strapping tape and explained: “There’s a lot of fans around the globe that are backing us. And you can definitely see with the marches back home. It was definitely for them and I know they’ll be cheering. I’m keen to get back and it's a job well done.”
But first its champions Australia in Saturday’s Old Trafford decider when Crichton will face many of his Grand Final-winning Penrith team-mates. He said: “I know they’ll come at me hard. We’ll try our best to come out on top.”
