Floods, sweat and tears: The L-series lens behind this tightly-framed triumph

Getting into position

"Usually with moving sports such as rugby, you don't know where it's going to finish, but I positioned myself right in the middle and focused on Laidlaw, hoping the rest of the team would come over to celebrate if he scored. Sometimes a player will score and then run randomly in different directions but he scored, turned away, then the rest of the team rushed over. I knew I had the shot. Alastair Kellock, punching the air, has such an expressive look on his face, and you can see how pumped he and the other guys are.

"I shot this on a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV [now replaced by the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II] and a Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens, and it's pretty much full frame. I now mainly shoot with the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II but at that time the EOS-1D Mark IV dominated professional sports. It's a magnificent camera – the high frame rate is perfect for sports and, fortunately for this situation, the camera is sturdy enough to withstand some moisture and adverse weather conditions."

Worth the wait

"It was so dark that to be sure I'd stop the action I had to shoot at a really fast shutter speed, which drove down my aperture. Shooting at f/2.8 compacts the shot, leaving no detail at all in the background and adding to the miserable night look. You can see there's a bloke running in from the left who it might have been nice to include, but I chose to use the fixed Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM with tight framing.

"With a shot at goal, the first player in defence needs to be 10 metres back, so I knew the [Australian] Wallabies weren't going to be close enough for me to be able to tell the other side of the story. If it had been general play or a scrum and Scotland had won closer to the sideline, I'd have gone wider, hoping to include one of the Wallabies holding their head or lying on the ground while the Scottish players celebrated around them. You don't need anything in the background to tell this story. There's so much emotion.

"When I look at this shot I feel my own sense of victory. I'm an official photographer for Australian rugby, so there had been a lot of pre-game stuff to shoot that day as well. It had been a long slog. When your hands get freezing cold, it makes it really uncomfortable and difficult to work. I'm just so glad I got something out of such a horrible night!"