Megson penalised Allen for a head-butt on Fitzpatrick: He should have been off the park Hart said

Megson penalised Allen for a head-butt on Fitzpatrick: "He should have been off the park," Hart said. "Head-butting is a sending-off offence".New Zealand: Penalties Mehrtens 5 South Africa: Try Joubert. Penalties Stransky 3.NEW ZEALAND: C Cullen (Manawatu); J Wilson (Otago), F Bunce, W Little (both North Harbour), J Lomu (Counties); A Mehrtens, J Marshall (both Canterbury); C Dowd, S Fitzpatrick (capt), O Brown (all Auckland), I Jones (North Harbour), R Brooke, M Jones (both Auckland), J Kronfeld (Otago), Z Brooke (Auckland). But that score was only enough for an 8-6 half-time lead and as Mehrtens drilled over three second-half penalties the Springboks found themselves on the losing end for the second successive week.The New Zealand coach, John Hart, who named an unchanged side for Saturday's Test against Australia at Brisbane, was disappointed with his side and the refereeing of Ray Megson "There were too many penalties," he said. "The referee just didn't allow the game to flow."Hart was also angry that Megson did not order off South African hooker John Allen in the first minute. That's worrying, particularly with five away Tests looming up."New Zealand were always under pressure when South Africa had matched their early drive and hit back to take control with the 19th-minute score from the full-back Andre Joubert.

By his standards that was a very poor performance," he saidThirteen months ago, Mehrtens's missed goal allowed South Africa to win the World Cup, but Fitzpatrick said he was not interested in revenge "The World Cup final wasn't on our minds We just wanted to play well and we didn't. Of course we're pleased to win, but the backs didn't create enough scoring opportunities. Instead, the New Zealand captain gave his match-winning kicker a good, old-fashioned rollicking.Mehrtens had landed five of his nine penalty attempts for a victory the All Blacks scarcely deserved virtually to wrap up the inaugural Tri- Nations Championship That, though, was not good enough for Fitzpatrick "Andrew had a shocker - and that's putting it mildly. Rugby Union New Zealand 15 South Africa 11 For one moment, Sean Fitzpatrick just might have been tempted to stand Andrew Mehrtens a few beers. He was, old men will tell you, a far superior player to Ian Botham.I once asked a professor of politics from Washington about John F Kennedy, another charismatic who shared Hammond's weakness. He replied: "I believe JFK was a great man but a very complex one who should never be judged on one facet of his personality." That would also serve as an epitaph for Hammond as, indeed, does this fascinating biography.Derek Hodgson. Foot concludes that Hammond contracted syphilis or another sexually transmitted disease in the West Indies and that the treatment at the time - penicillin was undiscovered pre-war - caused a slow, insidious, long-term poisoning of his whole system.

There are other mysteries, including a cryptic reference in the Gloucestershire minutes: "advance any monies necessary to pay the accounts of Hammond".Foot pays proper attention to the sunny side, the joy and delight brought to so many cricket lovers around the world by the quality of Hammond's play. The value of Foot's book in terms of the game's history is that he challenges this assumption and, by assiduous research and talking to many who knew Wally, offers a much more cogent explanation. He scored 50,000 runs, 167 centuries and averaged 58 in his 85 Test matches; he scored 3,000 runs in two seasons and passed 2,000 12 times. Malaria, contracted on a tour of the West Indies in 1927, was cited for his illnesses and mercurial temperament.

We have all seen photographs of Hammond, usually with a cap, sun hat or trilby pulled down over his forehead, a drooping cigarette in the corner of the mouth. Foot's publishers have found a photograph that shows Hammond as pre-war society knew him: well-dressed, handsome, with an obvious charm.Hammond liked women, and women liked him. The boy from Cirencester Grammar School found his enormous skills with bat and ball - one captain thought he would have rivalled Sobers as an all-rounder had he bowled more often - gave him an entry to that bright and febrile world we know from Evelyn Waugh and Brideshead Revisited.From the early Thirties, the dashing and brilliant young man changed. Yet Hutton said of him: "The most perfect batsman I ever saw, more enjoyable to watch than Sir Don."Hammond wrote three books on his own career. There followed two biographies and any number of articles in journals. David Foot's sub-title explains the motive for this edition, and Foot, who has built an enviable reputation through his work on Harold Gimblett, Charlie Parker, Viv Richards and other stars in the West, makes an excellent start with the dust jacket. He played for Gloucestershire and England, started as a professional and became an amateur (and so captained England), and he could be, according to contemporaries, a funny bugger - meaning quirky, odd, moody, rude, miserable.