Allan Munro enjoyed a stellar business career with one of Scotland’s leading fund managers while he was also instrumental in preventing the Scottish Rugby Union from entering insolvency a decade ago, but the proudest moment of his working life came neither at a negotiating table nor in a boardroom.

A veteran of umpteen multi-million pound business deals, not to mention ferocious in-fighting during his spell as chairman of the SRU following the committee coup which cost the organisation its chairman and chief executive, his eyes still well up at the memory of an unexpected encounter at an Edinburgh restaurant a quarter of a century ago.

“We were in Bar Roma in the West End which is now closed, Liz (his wife) and I. There was a man sitting across the room with his wife and a little boy and during our meal the little boy came over to our table and simply said: ‘Mr Munro I want to thank you for saving our club,’” Munro recalled.

“That just blew me away. He must be in his thirties now.”

At the time, having recently been appointed managing director of Ivory & Sime whose ranks he had worked his way through after originally being recruited in his teens as an office boy, Munro had found himself in a key role on the board of his beloved Hibs when Wallace Mercer made his bid to merge the Edinburgh clubs in 1990.

What made fending that off different to challenges faced previously and in years to come was the depth of his lifelong attachment to the club as he poignantly explained.

“In ’93 we lost the League Cup final to an Ally McCoist overhead kick and the open topped bus would have passed the bottom of our road, so it had been my ambition to drive up and let my dad see the cup because I knew he didn’t have long to live. However when he died I got permission from Hibs to scatter his ashes at the ground and I was able to say in his eulogy that courtesy of Hibs I would always be able to say ‘I’ll see you behind the goals,’” said Munro.

“That’s what he would always say to me when I was a youngster. He would leave the house to meet his brothers and his dad in the pub or in the bookies and he didn’t want me going there, so that was always the instruction, to meet behind the goals down the slope.”

Consequently he could fully identify with the strength of feeling among Hibs supporters when Mercer made his move.

“At the time when I was going around people were saying to me ‘So long as you save Hibs we’ll play on Portobello beach, whatever,’” said Munro.

That both the club and its home ground were ultimately saved is consequently a source of huge pride, albeit Munro plays down his own role, preferring to focus on Tom Farmer, the man who made and sustained the necessary investment, as well as the chairmen he helped appoint Dougie Crome, and Jim Dow and board member Kenny McLean, who have all since passed away.

Emotions naturally ran high last weekend then as Hibs finally ended their 114 year wait to win the Scottish Cup.

“It was the same as when John Collins won the League Cup,” said Munro.

“The players are celebrating and the fans are singing ‘Sunshine on Leith’. I was away… the tears were running down my face.”

While like every right-thinking person with the best interests of football in general and Hibs in particular, he was consequently appalled by the scenes which followed Saturday’s cup final, then, Munro clearly understands better than most how euphoria can get the better of supporters and cause them to act in ways they have reason to regret.

As a young man he was a decent footballer in his own right, so much so that his love of the game played a significant part in his initial employment since he had turned down a bank job because they insisted he worked on Saturdays and he was not prepared to sacrifice his football, a decision he ultimately justified by earning a place on the playing staff at Hearts which was going pretty well until one particular derby encounter.

“The reserves didn’t have a game so everyone had to report at Tynecastle. We were all sitting there in the stand in club blazer, flannels and club tie and Hibs were three-nil up after about 20-25 minutes when Jimmy O’Rourke came through and hit one from 25 yards into the postage stamp corner and I jumped out of my seat and shouted ‘yesssss!’” he says, grinning widely.

“I then remembered where I was and sat down quickly. It wasn’t quite the last thing I did as a Hearts player but I wasn’t there much longer.”

That may have been one of his poorer career decisions but an older and wiser Munro kept a cooler head the next time he was involved in a major altercation between the Edinburgh clubs for which all Hibs supporters should still be grateful.