There are few sounds in rugby like the Shed in full voice and the Kingsholm crowd had something to lose their minds over on Friday night, with a 50:22 kick so sensational it has been dubbed a 22:22. Take a bow, Ben Meehan.

After Saracen’s last-gasp winner in this match (19-16) so much of the attention is on whether an Owen Farrell high tackle should have seen red before his drop-goal winner. However, Meehan’s moment dropped jaws for a very different reason.

Did he mean it? How does one practice for instances like this? Whatever – we enjoyed it immensely anyway!

Related: Was this the 50:22 of the year 2022 from Raffaele Storti?

On Twitter, Jared Wright called it a 22:22, which feels like an apt name for this play. You can see how buzzing Meehan was after it too.

As Cherry and Whites team-mate Jamal Ford-Robinson joked during the game, “really wish Ben Meehan would stop kicking. Very boring.” Quite!

Ben Meehan kicking brilliance

In a recent piece on Where to put the perfect box-kick, Meehan’s name popped up amongst the data provided by Sportable (the smart ball company) and Oval Insights.

For an example of his fine work, of the 109 contestable box kicks Ben Meehan made in the league last season, 41 were with his left foot and 68 with his right foot. By contrast, only two of Faf de Klerk’s contestable kicks were made with his right foot, and all 99 Aled Davies’s contestable box kicks were with his right foot.

Of the scrum-halves, Goucester’s Meehan stands out for his ambipedal work.

What did you make of this moment? Did Meehan mean it? Let us know your thoughts at rugbyworldletters@futurenet.com or via our social media channels. 

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