Dan Biggar has yet to find an explanation for why, when staring between the posts and down the barrel of the most crucial moment of his life, he suddenly did something that he has never quite done before: the Macarena.
On YouTube, 100 000 people and counting have now seen the Welsh flyhalf's protracted fidgety ritual in the seconds before driving that huge 49-yard match-winning strike clean between the posts, set to the syncopated drum loop of Los Del Rio's 1995 cult dance classic.
The bouncing strides, the dusting down of the shoulders one by one with the fingers of the opposite hand, followed by the tousling of the hair, these are all things with which regular Biggar watchers are not familiar.
“I think if I'd have known the reaction to it I would have just kept my head down and hands down by my side,” is all he has said on the matter.
In fairness, that most crucial of kicks was not the Biggarena's debut outing of the night. It had happened at 0-0 too and on a couple of subsequent occasions. It also happened again last night, as he lined up a couple of straightforward penalties against the Fijians.
“It's something that happens when I get a bit edgy and nervous with goal-kicking so I just try to get myself into a comfortable position and routine, a bit fidgety and then get set,” he said. This is a somewhat startling confession. Even rugby fans who have only been converted to the sport in the last few weeks are already familiar with the particular idiosyncrasies of the men whose job it is to step up to the tee and kick for victory. They make it look simple. In many ways it is simple. The challenge is in finding absolute consistency.
It is tempting to imagine the various trademark stages of each man's routine - Jonny Wilkinson's famous golf club stance, the curiously angled forearms of Quade Cooper, Biggar's bouncy Tiggerish run-up - as being just part of some superstitious ritual.
In fact, each tiny detail tends to have its purpose. Which is what makes the Biggarena so unlikely. It is, he said, “a way to get the sweat off my forehead” - drying his hands, then wiping his brow. On less crucial occasions, perhaps there is less sweat to wipe.
There is, it is clear, no set way to kick a ball between the posts. Ask its leading practitioners and the only bit of advice that is unanimous is that “everyone has their own way of doing it”.
Chris Paterson, scorer of a record 806 points for Scotland between 1999 and 2011 - the majority with his boot - had a habit of wiping his left ear with his shoulder before drilling the ball home.
“That was giving myself what I call physical feedback,” he says. “It meant that I knew the left side of my body was in the right place for my kick.
“If you have definite steps, you can evaluate what's wrong. So if you miss one, you know why. If I missed to the right it tended to be because my alignment was wrong. If I missed to the left it was because I was too quick, too rushed, or because I would drop my left shoulder. The ear thing, it wasn't for rhythm, or superstition, it was to give myself physical feedback.”
The game's current leading protagonists all have different convictions. According to England's Owen Farrell, the crucial steps are to have the valve of the ball right at the front, aiming down the centre of the posts, the ball pointing in the direction it must be kicked.
“I'll pick a spot, far beyond the posts. The posts are irrelevant,” he said while giving a kicking masterclass last year. “I'll narrow the target down.”
Farrell is known for repeatedly looking down at the ball and up at the target, time and time again. “The weird, eye thing that you see? I'm drawing a line from the ball to where I want to kick it. I'll keep drawing a line. Then I'll kick the ball along that line.”
Johnny Sexton of Ireland likes to take three steps back and three to the side. Jonny Wilkinson preferred four steps back and five to the side. In both cases, they're attempting to come on the ball at a 45-degree angle, which the bio mechanics argue is the angle that should give you maximum power.
After his three steps back, Sexton, unusually, likes to take a pause. “I use this moment here just to focus on my target. Take a deep breath. Try and relax myself. Then take three to the side.
“I tap my toe a couple of times. Just to remind myself of something. Then I'm at the angle that I want to be on. I focus on my target. Three steps into the ball, and then I strike straight down that line and hope for the best.”
According to Richie Murphy, Sexton's kicking coach at Leinster: “The key is simplicity. The simpler it is the easier it is to replicate each time. There's no one way to kick the ball but there are basic fundamentals everyone should have.
“Make sure your plant foot is parallel with the ball. Your angle of approach can change from time to time but it's much easier if you're working off 45 degrees.”
But even here, there is disagreement. “I use the seams as a sight for the target,” Wilkinson said in a kicking tutorial for World Rugby last year. “Line them up so they're pointing where they want to aim. I lean the ball forward and a little bit out to the left. For me, I want to strike the ball just inside the seam, about a third of the way up.”
There's no doubting it worked for him, but it's not to everyone's tastes.
“I was much lower than Jonny,” says Paterson. “I would kick on the seam, and I would strike the ball far lower. On the Gilbert balls, they have a little registered trademark circle, with a tiny R . I would stare at that R. If I couldn't see that, I would know my head wasn't down.”
That the Biggarena crept in at such a crucial moment is the opposite of what kickers aim for.
“It's a cliche but you must treat every one the same. A kick to go 20 points ahead, or a kick to beat England at Twickenham in the World Cup, you must treat them all the same,” Paterson adds.
“On the big occasion, there is that urge to change it, to do something different. You perfect it in training, then suddenly you go in front of 80 000 people and you want to do things differently.
“The biggest challenge of all is to avoid that. To try and treat the game the same as training. To make sure it's always the same.”
That would at least explain the reemergence of the Biggarena at the Millennium Stadium last night. Perhaps it is here to stay.
The Independent