ALAN PRESCOTT will forever be remembered for one of the most conspicuous acts of bravery seen in sport. Playing through injury is one thing, but carrying on with an arm broken in the third minute of a rugby league Test against Australia is the stuff of legends.

Prescott was the captain of the 1958 tour to Australia and had already led his side to defeat in the first Test in Sydney, making the second, on 5 July in Brisbane, vitally important if Great Britain were to win the series.

Prescott recalled later that he had shattered his arm when it struck the head of the Australian forward, Rex Mossop. "It went numb and I knew it was broken," he said. But, such was the importance that the side attached to the game, he never considered going off and leaving his side short- handed; this was, of course, long before the days of substitutes.

A team-mate, Dave Bolton, had no choice but to go off with a broken collar- bone, and three other players were badly hurt during the first half of what became known as the Battle of Brisbane.

At half-time, the Australian doctor on duty in the dressing rooms insisted that Prescott must come off, but he was having none of it, his determination to carry on all the more remarkable for a man playing in the most physically punishing of positions at prop forward.

The Great Britain manager that day was Tom Mitchell (who died earlier this month). He wrote that Prescott swapped places in the scrum to try to protect his broken right arm, but otherwise tried to carry on as though nothing had happened.

"He gathered the ball, he ran, he dictated the pattern of play and he tackled well with his good arm," Mitchell recorded. "Only those present at the game had any idea of the man's naked courage."

With Prescott there to hold them together, Great Britain hung on to win 25-18. Two weeks later, with one arm in a sling and the other holding aloft the Ashes trophy, he was carried shoulder-high around the ground in Sydney after they won the third and deciding Test 40-17.

Mitchell, knowing of Prescott's precarious health, left a tribute to him before his own death, talking of his "selfless sacrifice for his team and country, unequalled in any sport anywhere in the world".