He never practises field goals and hasn't struck one since the under-18s, but Nathan Merritt knew he'd won the game for South Sydney as soon as his boot connected with the ball in the final seconds of a dramatic heritage round match against Wests Tigers at the SCG on Sunday.
With the scores locked 22-all and only three seconds remaining, the ball swung wide to Merritt for an improbable attempt at a one-pointer and the match.
The cool-as-you-like winger hit the ball sweetly from about 18m out and 15m from the right upright to sink the Tigers 23-22 in a tremendous contest played out in front of almost 30,000 fans.
"As soon as I hit it I knew it was going over," a confident Merritt said.
Merritt played a key role in getting Souths in a position to take a shot at field goal after a previous attempt by Craig Wing was charged down.
Describing those last dramatic moments, Merritt said: "Wingy was setting up again and I could see everyone getting ready for him to take the field goal so I just let him know I was outside him and he passed me the ball and I just had a shot and it came off sweet."
Asked if ever slotted one-pointers at training, Merritt said with a smile: "I don’t practice field goals, I'm out on the wing."
Rabbitohs coach Jason Taylor wasn't surprised by Merritt's last-second heroics.
But he was even happier the little winger had put himself in a position to kick the field goal.
"He cleaned up the first one that got charged down and the second one he kicks the field goal. Smart play late in the game when the pressure is on," Taylor said.
"It was really smart what he did. Nathan puts himself in a position to help (Wing) out."
"He could have just been sitting out there on the wing."
"He's a talented guy and you can't hit them much sweeter than that."
Souths trailed 22-10 after an hour and 22-16 with five minutes remaining before coming up with a grandstand finish to see off the fast-fading Tigers.
But while he was happy to escape with the two points, Taylor was not being fooled into thinking it was a complete performance.
"We were very pleased we got the victory in the end. But some things we came here to do better in relation to our last couple of games …we didn't do them as well as we can," he said.
"We're all feeling 'yeah, we won but we still didn’t do that stuff as well as we want to'."
"What is there is the effort that the boys are putting in and it was so evident."
"The way they kept coming and got themselves back into the game was a credit to them."
The Tigers, already missing a number of key players, weren't helped by the loss of prop Keith Galloway (knee) during the first half.
But after leading by 12 points and then six late in the game, Tigers coach Tim Sheens was bitterly disappointed his team didn’t see the job through.
"They came home and we were flat on our feet hoping we'd done enough to win it," he said
"We had them by 12 and we really should have put them to the sword."
"There were chances in the second half and we didn’t take them."
Tigers skipper Robbie Farah was absolutely brilliant and has surely played himself into a NSW jumper.