Larkham's famous 48m-drop goal to seal victory over South Africa in extra time of the 1999 Rugby World Cup semi-final has gone down in rugby folklore as the defining moment in the Wallabies' victorious Rugby World Cup campaign. South Africa had got to the semi final largely through the efforts of Jannie de Beer kicking five drop goals in their previous match. By contrast not one of the Australian players on the team had to that date ever scored a drop goal at test level. The fact that Larkham had quite a badly injured knee through the match caused Steve Smith to remark incredulously while calling the game for English ITV "He can barely stand on that leg and yet he just thwacked it over."