Jack Ferguson never met his father, who died in tragic circumstances two months before his son's birth in 1930. But he would have been thinking of the former footballer last night at St Andrews University, as the water polo legend became one of the inaugural inductees to the institution's Sports Hall of Fame.

Ferguson was in the Great Britain water polo team at two Olympic Games, in 1952 and '56. At the latter he was the only Scot in a tournament won by Hungary, the infamous "blood in the water" final against the Soviet Union weeks after tanks had been sent on to the streets of Budapest to crush the uprising. Some of the Hungarians never returned home.

Ferguson's father, the football legend Hugh born in Motherwell, scored 364 league goals, one of only seven British players to top 350. Among his claims to fame was scoring the goal which took the FA Cup out of England for the only time. The 80th anniversary of that match - Cardiff City beat Arsenal 1-0 - was last Monday. Hugh then went on to sign for Dundee, where he died at Dens Park in 1930.

His son, Jack, whom he never lived to see, remarkably has a similar unique sporting distinction. He scored the winner in the 1949 Amateur Swimming Association water polo final. It is the only time that trophy has gone out of England, according to David Jarvie, a Motherwell stalwart and former team-mate who delivered Ferguson's oration at the ceremony in the university's Gateway Building last night.

Jack played water polo for Motherwell with whom he won the Scottish Cup 12 times in 13 years to 1960. He captained Scotland with whom he won 25 caps and a further 10 for Britain outside the Olympics. No Scot has played Olympic water polo since.

After quitting the game, Jack was national coach and team manager for four years, and he was deputy director of PE at the university until his retirement in 1990.

Among the others inducted were Sir Menzies Campbell, sprinter, former Great Britain Olympic team captain and now Lib-Dem leader; marathon runners Donald Macgregor - seventh in the 1972 Olympic final, who also contested two Commonwealth Games - and Terry Mitchell, an extra in the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire on St Andrews beach who, like Macgregor, was a multiple Scottish champion.

Joining them were Fiona Lothian, the former world duathlon bronze medallist and an internationalist in six sports; hockey's Ross Napier, who represented Scotland, Scottish and British Universities, and St Andrews; David Whyte, a former international long-jumper also capped 13 times by Scotland at rugby; Tyrone Howe, Irish and British Lions rugby player; and Professor Emeritus Bill Shaw, who held several squash titles.

Seven people were inducted in absentia: golfers Colin Montgomerie, Seve Ballesteros, Peter Alliss and Jack Nicklaus (all hold honorary degrees from St Andrews); another honorary graduate, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson; graduate Chris Hoy, Olympic, World and Commonwealth cycling champion; and Dr Allan Lindsay, whose Scottish triple jump record set in 1949 endured for nine years.

A GB Olympian in 1948, Lindsay's finest memory of St Andrews was walking along the harbour pier "at 11.30pm on VE night, and knowing that World War II was over".

Dr Charlie Sifford, awarded an honorary degree last June, is also inducted. The first African-American on the PGA Tour, he fought against the colour bar in US golf. A caddy at 13, and the first black player to win a tour event and the 1975 Senior PGA title, he was never invited to compete at the US Masters.