Chipmunk
Coach
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- 16,396
All that is required is that it is intentionally a drop kick, and not simply dropping the ball and sticking your foot out in desperation. I have no idea what rule book Vossy was reading when claimed that you have to be aiming at the posts. He might have got confused with the rule regarding penalty kicks (which can be taken by drop kick) which requires you to make a genuine attempt at the scoring the goal.
The confusing thing about Slater's kick was that he was actually in the process of preparing to put through a short kick (or pretending to) when he fumbled....in all likelihood that wouldn't have been a drop kick...but he would have been entitled to drop kick the little stab kick behind the defensive line. So I think it's the wrong call, but once Klein had made the soft call of try, I can't blame the video ref for continuing down that line. It's not his fault that none of the commentators know the rules.
If I'm not mistaken, a player has to claim that a try has been scored for the referee to actually adjudicate on that. At no stage did Billy Slater claim he might have scored a try.