Battling the Lions: New Zealand's saddest test

Fans climb billboards to watch the test.

Words - and a whole lot more beside - flew after 18 penalty goal points from the boot of Don Clarke gifted the All Blacks a stunning 18-17 victory over the Lions at Carisbrook in 1959.

The visitors were clearly aggrieved, and the press was duly caustic in its appraisal.

"The saddest rugby test that had ever been played in New Zealand took place this afternoon," lamented the Dunedin Evening Star's sports edition.

Alex Veysey of The Dominion deplored the manner of the victory: "Statistics are coldly factual things; they cannot show that the moral victory was the Lions', that it was a travesty of justice that they should be a test down."

However, JBG Thomas, who wrote for the Western Mailin Cardiff, effused: "This was the match of a lifetime! Few will ever see such a match again. To the All Blacks the victory - to the Lions the glory." Digging over the evidence, some facts bypass the sympathy allowed the Lions that day.

Various writers claimed that referee Alan Fleury, a Dunedin bank manager, was a perfectly fair and even pernickety referee. He must have been. He awarded 40 penalties, 20 a side, during the match.

Clarke attempted goals with 10 of them, and gained six - the fourth from 46m, the fifth from 41m, the winning one in the last minute a tiddler of 32m. Reports say the ground was heavy and the ball difficult to control.

Another important fact, which almost disappeared from sight among the weeping and wailing, was that two of the All Black loose forwards, the redoubtable Peter Jones and new chum Brian Finlay, were injured quite seriously in the first half.

Wilson Whineray, the All Black captain: "We only had Rex Pickering as an effective loose forward for about an hour.

"He was fresh and young, and he took off like a rocket. Unfortunately, but understandably, Rex was rather tired by halfway through the second half.

"So we really had no covering forwards at all and if the Lions backs got through we had great difficulty in catching them." Whineray said he could understand the Lions' laments about losing by penalty goals, but in a test match you try to win by whatever means are available - within the laws.

In his book, The Boot, written by Pat Booth, Clarke said that the referee "did a great job that day. What was his reward? He was crucified for the outcome. I believe that his decisions were the only ones possible.

"Most of the Lions lost like gentlemen. They congratulated the All Blacks and me on that kicking record while making no secret of their own disappointment." Clarke relates that before the usual test dinner, Tom Pearce, the All Black manager, was in the bar and shouted for the players of both teams. He was doused by soda siphons.

At the dinner a section of the Lions team sat together.

Oysters were eaten from the shell, and the shells were hurled by the Lions around the dining room - one guest evidently had stitches put in a head cut. When the oyster shells ran out, some of the Lions used spoons to catapult trifle and jelly around the room.

"This," said Clarke, "left a poor memory for me of a day which should have been one of the most happily memorable in my whole career."

All Blacks 18
Don Clarke 6 penalties
Lions 17
Malcolm Price (2), Peter Jackson, Tony O'Reilly tries, Bev Risman conversion, David Hewitt penalty