Fleming owns up over kick

Jim Fleming, touch judge at Saturday's Australia-France game, explained yesterday how he lost track of the Richard Dourthe penalty - the one disallowed despite the fact that it flew between the posts.

Fleming, his fellow touch judge Iain Ramage and the New Zealand referee, Paul Honiss, all concluded that Dourthe had narrowly missed.

'The ball dipped at the last minute,' Fleming said. 'With the white crossbar, the white ball and the floodlights, you could lose sight of it. We all thought it went under - but we might have got it wrong.'

Dour the was feeling hard done by yesterday. 'I've seen it from the camera angle behind the posts,' he said. 'It was obviously impossible to refuse the goal.'

Obviously...