Meeuws hailed for sporting act

Kees Meeuws didn't want any fuss made. He only did what his conscience told him, he said. Yet this ferocious All Blacks prop is being acclaimed here as a symbol of sportsmanship for an act which ensured Australia was today celebrating a great sporting success, not a tragedy.

The Wallabies have an extra motivation to win the final against England for stricken team-mate Ben Darwin, the prop who suffered a prolapsed disc in his neck after losing his footing in the scrum. It was such an awful incident, nobody can yet say if he will ever play again and his only ambition is to be fit to watch Saturday's match in a neck brace from the sidelines.

Yet he knows it may be thanks to Meeuws that he can still dream of any comeback at all. For if it had not been for him responding immediately to Darwin's desperate cries of "neck, neck, neck" and stopping the full force of his 18st push, his opponent may have ended up with a crippling injury.

Today Meeuws said it was the unwritten rule among front-rowers which had stopped him continuing-with the scrum. The All Blacks pack had pushed through the Wallabies, causing the scrum to collapse and for Darwin to scream out in agony.

"Once you heard that 'neck, neck' call, you don't want that on your conscience," Meeuws said. "I didn't really pull back. I just stopped going through. When someone says neck, they don't call it out for nothing."

Darwin, recovering in hospital here, offered a vote of thanks to the 29-year-old as he offered a chilling recollection of the incident. "I heard a crack and immediately called out 'neck, neck, neck' and, to his credit, Kees Meeuws stopped pushing, which was fortunate because I lost feeling in my body and he could have really crashed me into the ground," said Darwin.