The 100 Greatest Scottish Sporting Icons day six: The countdown continues with numbers 43-29

Senior players persuaded Jim Telfer to return as Scotland’s head coach (see elsewhere on this page) when he was initially demoralised after overseeing a failed Lions tour but, on the field, the performances of a player who had not been selected for that trip to New Zealand were hugely influential.

Leslie already had an exceptional place in the sport’s history having initially, in 1975, been capped out of a fourth division club, Dundee HSFP, whose fortunes he was subsequently to transform as a coach after hanging up his boots.

His regularly injury-interrupted international career would last a decade, ending when he captained the side in 1985. However it was in 1984 that he produced his very best rugby in a Scotland team which also included all-time greats Ian “the Bear” Milne, Colin Deans in the front-row, Iain Paxton in the back-row and, at half-back, John Rutherford and Roy Laidlaw, as well as the national team’s first goal-kicking machine, Peter Dods.

Read more: The 100 Greatest Scottish Sporting Icons day five: Numbers 55-44

The Triple Crown, a first since 1938, was an achievement in itself, completed courtesy of two tries from their scrum-half. The area of Ireland’s home ground he scored those two tries was then dubbed “Laidlaw’s Corner”. Jean-Pierre Rives’s France were heavy favourites when they arrived at Murrayfield for a decider between two unbeaten sides and the game was in the balance until a disputed try – which may have involved a Scottish knock-on at a close-range try – saw Jim Calder dive on the ball to secure a first “Grand Slam” since the day Murrayfield first opened its doors, 59 years earlier.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Calder scored that try and was a fine player in his own right but, following an incident involving his fellow flanker, France’s scrum-half Jerome Gallion was carried from the pitch.

An element of mystery surrounded that moment but, in symbolic terms, it was telling that Leslie got the better of that collision between arguably the two most influential players. While there would be French protests about the way that particular match had been officiated, the Dundonian’s overall contribution was such that he was subsequently made World Rugby Player of the Year.

No other Scot has ever received such an accolade and it is worth noting that, in recent years, when that award has been formalised by the governing body, only two of his compatriots, Mike Blair and Greig Laidlaw, have even been short-listed.

42

Willie Miller and Aberdeen’s Cup Winners’ Cup winning team

For a period in the late seventies and early eighties they did not so much challenge as match the Old Firm trophy for trophy. It is an era synonymous with Alex Ferguson, but it can be argued that a major turning point arrived before he did, in the 1976/77 League Cup final when, under Ally McLeod – who was to become more closely associated with the fortunes of the national team in subsequent years – Celtic were beaten. Fergie may not have been involved, then, but the man who would be his on-field general throughout his time as Aberdeen boss most certainly was.

Willie Miller played alongside Willie Garner, but the following year Alex McLeish forced his way into the side and, with Jim Leighton having also arrived at the club in 1977, a formidable defensive unit was built. By the time they made their big domestic statement in winning their next trophy, the Premier League title in 1980, the squad that powered the Dons through their greatest era was largely assembled, the names tripping off the tongue – Gordon Strachan, Stuart Kennedy, Neale Cooper, John Hewitt, John McMaster, Mark McGhee, Doug Rougvie.

Steve Archibald left, Peter Weir joined and, by 1982/83, a teenager with a seemingly extendable neck by the name of Eric Black was making a name for himself. He would score the opening goal on the night that was to be their crowning glory and, while extra time was required, it only made it all the more impressive that Aberdeen could defeat Europe’s greatest club, Real Madrid, over a full two hours when John Hewittt scored the winner early in the second half of extra time. They would go on to beat Hamburg in the European Super Cup final, pretty much proving themselves to be the top team in Europe in 1983.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Down the east coast in Dundee we were watching another extraordinary managerial career unfold as “wee Jim” McLean lifted Dundee United to hitherto unimagined levels, winning three domestic trophies, reaching a UEFA Cup final – extending, on the way, their 100 per cent winning record against Barcelona in European ties to four in all – and a European Cup semi-final.

However, it was Fergie’s Aberdeen that had the upper hand in the “New Firm” rivalry, as well as challenging the established order. It is chastening to think that for all Celtic and Rangers’ respective travails in the interim, no club has taken the Scottish title out of Glasgow since Fergie’s Dons in 1985.

41

Glasgow 2014

It might as well have been Rio, two years early, with the sun shining as never before for a Glasgow fortnight (well the first week at least), showcasing the erstwhile, self-styled second city of Empire in a way that organisers could not have dared hope. From the couthie opening ceremony onwards, there was a buzz around every aspect of what became a joyous carnival, the Scottish public enthusiastically embracing the opportunity to witness a wide array of sports being played at a high and in some cases even world-class level.

A total of 19 golds were won, 53 medals in all placing Scotland fourth on the table behind England – who topped it for the first time since the Games were previously held in Scotland in 1986 – Australia and Canada.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Claims that the expenditure would be justified through a “legacy” in terms of the impact on the health of the nation have long since been debunked, but it was a heck of a party and a good deal better organised than the 1986 version in Edinburgh which was heading for financial disaster until the self-serving but vital intervention of the odious Robert Maxwell.

Glasgow 2014 was Scotland’s third staging of the Commonwealth Games and, while it is hard to identify moments that compare with the gold medal wins by Ian (5000 metres) and Lachie Stewart (10,000 metres), as well as Rosemary Stirling (800 metre) in the 1970 version, that is partly because those were achieved on the running track, but also because there were so many more successes for the home team in 2014, more than twice as many gold medals as at the two Edinburgh Games (six in 1970 and three in 1986) put together.

In 1970 a fourth gold medal was won in the athletics arena, by discus thrower Rosemary Payne, while light middleweight Tom Imrie and sabre rattler Sandy Leckie out fought their boxing and fencing opponents respectively. In 1986 golden moments were even rarer, the 10,000 metres win by the then Liz Lynch announcing her on the global stage, while Grant Knox and George Adrain, in the men’s pairs, added to Scotland’s vast haul of Scottish wins on the lawn bowling green.

Another men’s partnership probably produced the greatest Scottish moment in the history of their sport at the ’86 Games too, since for all that Imogen Bankier and Robert Blair have contested World Championship finals, while Kirsty Gilmour rounded off Glasgow 2104 by winning the last medal for the home team in the women’s singles, Billy Gilliland and Dan Travers – now the governing body’s president – produced the only Scottish win at a major championship, thrashing Englishmen Andy Goode and Nigel Tier in the men’s doubles final.

40

Jocky Wilson

One of the most popular figures during darts’ highest-profile era, watched by huge television audiences on the BBC, Jocky claimed his first world title in 1982, beating another of the game’s all-time greats, Englishman John Lowe, in the final.

Legend had it that the rotund little Fifer was a slow starter who came into his own once he had a couple of drinks, but became vulnerable once more if opponents could hang on until he had drunk too much.

He effectively rubbished that notion when winning his second world title in 1989, racing into a five sets to love lead against the leading player of the era, Eric Bristow, but allowing the five-time world champion to bring it back to 5-4 in sets and 2-2 in legs during the 10th, before clinching the match.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Fellow Scots Les Wallace and, in what has become the more prestigious of the rival championships, Gary Anderson have also won world titles, the latter just missing out on a third in succession this month, but the fame of Jocky “on the oche” was of a different order.

That is best demonstrated by his unwitting contribution to one of the great Top of the Pops moments when his grinning face was used as the backdrop when Dexys Midnight Runners performed Jackie Wilson said, their tribute to one of the great soul singers, in 1982.

Kevin Rowlands, the Dexys front man, has since refuted claims that it was a blunder by the programme’s producers, saying they were deliberately being mischievous with their own work. Either way, it reflects darts’ popularity in the days when Jocky was battling with Bristow, Lowe, his own demons and a reliance on the drinks that fuelled their sport in that era.

39

Rhona Martin

Many Scottish skips have tarried much longer on the global curling stage: Hammy McMillan was a world champion whose 20-year-old record of three successive European title wins was matched only in November; David Smith reached three world finals, winning one; Chuck Hay reached two, also winning one of them; and, most recently, in the full-time era, Dave Murdoch has won two world and three titles, while Eve Muirhead has won a world title and medalled at the last seven European Championships.

Martin’s own contemporary and rival, Jackie Lockhart, who won that year’s World Championship, was also a more familiar figure on the international circuit, but no Scottish curler has ever brought such attention to the sport as Rhona Martin did when she delivered the “stone of destiny” that won Britain’s first Winter Olympic gold medal for 78 years in Salt Lake City in 2002.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Martin had a reputation as something of a nearly woman on the domestic scene for much of her career, while she would have missed out on the Winter Olympics had Julia Ewart’s rink gone on to win that year’s World Championships, after reaching the semi-finals and even after that was almost unable to travel due to illness.

After an excellent start, she and her team then stumbled on the point of reaching the play-offs, needing Switzerland to do them a favour by beating Germany in their last round-robin match, all of which only adds to the inspirational nature of her story. 

38

Joe Jordan and the Scotland 1974 Squad

Among America’s flawed sporting heroes was the man they called “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, a baseball player whose involvement in a match-fixing scandal when with the Chicago White Sox led to the famous headline: “Say it ain’t so Joe,” echoing the words reputedly spoken to him by a hero-worshipping youngster outside the court-room.

In Scottish sport, youngsters in the 1970s had toothless Joe Jordan to revere, a centre-forward of old-fashioned virtue who was willing, as would always be said admiringly by our parents and grand-parents, to put his head where others would not put their feet, explaining the absence of those front teeth which made him look all the more fierce.

He won an English league title with Leeds and also served Manchester United and AC Milan well, but is best remembered for his international performances and in particular his contributions to Scotland’s qualifications for a first ever World Cup in 1974 and a second in 1978.

The first of those was a superb headed winning goal in the decisive match against Czechoslovakia, the second, more controversially, four years later, when he appeared to grab David Jones’s arm and thrust it towards the ball, resulting in a penalty for Scotland that remains disputed in the valleys to this day.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

To those persistent Welsh accusations that he conned the referee in that World Cup qualifying match at Anfield, Joe has always maintained that it wasn’t so. However, the nature of the goal against the Czechs four years earlier after he had come on as a substitute for Kenny Dalglish, demonstrated an irrepressible will to do what needed to be done for his country, which was also evident at the 1974 World Cup finals.

Within a squad that contained some of Scotland’s greatest ever players, Dalglish, Denis Law and Billy Bremner to name but three, it was a campaign with which Jordan was synonymous. He scored the second goal against Zaire that forced Brazil to score three against the African side to have a superior goal difference to the Scots who had drawn with the then world champions.

We knew they would, though, leaving everything depended on Scotland’s meeting with Yugoslavia, who had scored nine against Zaire. Their late strike effectively ended Scotland’s campaign and, while at least one 11-year-old never saw big Joe’s equaliser, having stormed off to his room in tears, that goal meant his side had the dubious consolation of going home as the only unbeaten team in the tournament.

37

Colin Montgomerie

One of the best golfers never to have won a major championship, “Monty” was a model of consistency on the European Tour in the 1990s, winning seven successive Order of Merit titles between 1993 and ’99, then extending his record with an eighth success during something of a renaissance in the mid-noughties.

Strangely, though, given his capacity to divide opinion, it was within teams that he was at his most potent, boasting a record of 20 wins and just seven defeats in the 36 Ryder Cup matches he has played in the course of helping Europe to five wins in eight attempts as a player and to another victory when he was non-playing captain, while he led Scotland to victories in both The Dunhill Cup and The World Cup.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Montgomerie’s detractors doubtless feel karma has been at play in his failure to win one of golf’s biggest prizes while being among his sport’s finest players for the best part of two decades.

Even before his Order of Merit run began he was congratulated by Jack Nicklaus on his first major success at the US Open at Pebble Beach in 1992 only for Tom Kite, ironically then considered the best player never to have won a major, to defy the elements and produce the round of his life.

Thereafter he probably did not contend as often as he should have, but there were 10 top-10 finishes, a defeat in a play-off to Steve Elkington at the 1995 USPGA and in 2006, needing only a par at the final hole to win the US Open and playing his approach from the middle of the fairway, he missed the green, then three-putted for a double-bogey to let Geoff Ogilvy win.

For each of Kite, Elkington and Ogilvy it was a lone major championship success, rubbing salt into the wound, but Montgomerie won more tournaments in the course of his career than the three of them combined and has gone on to claim three victories in majors on the Seniors Tour.

36

Robert Millar

The first rider from an English-speaking country to win the coveted “King of the Mountains” polka dot jersey on the Tour de France in 1984, the Glaswegian finished fourth overall that year and was a true trailblazer in an era when continental cycling had an exoticism within British sporting circles.

Second-place finishes at each of the other Grand Tours, the Vuelta a Espana in 1985 and ’86 and the Giro d’Italia in 1987– when he also won the King of the Mountains – established him as one of the great cyclists and, in particular, climbers of his era.

He felt he was effectively conned out of victory in the 1985 Vuelta when fellow riders, with whom he had caught up after a puncture, congratulated him on having closed the gap to them during the penultimate, decisive stage and, effectively it seemed, won the overall race while concealing the fact that Spaniard Pedro Delgado had made what proved to be the break for victory.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

It is hard to know whether Millar’s notorious insularity was a crippling disadvantage in a sport where co-operation can be vital, as demonstrated in Spain in 1985, or whether it was part of the make-up of an individual who had the strength of character to shut out all distractions and defy the odds in achieving what he did.

His curious and compelling life story is well examined in one of those rare things, a superb sports book, In Search of Robert Millar, by Scottish journalist Richard Moore and, if his reputation was tainted by a drugs ban in 1992, the lightness of the punishment issued – a £1,100 fine and a three-month suspended ban – spoke to the murky environment in which he was operating at the time.

35

Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer

They could hardly have been more different in terms of background or temperament – one an urbane Anglo-Scottish back, the other a forward hewn from Border granite, but both had successful teaching careers which helped them apply their rugby knowledge to coaching.

Telfer’s playing career was over by the time McGeechan was capped in 1972. He had captained Scotland in the late-1960s, scoring a famous try in Paris, bringing a victory that was not repeated in the French capital for 26 years.

McGeechan made his debut on the same day as Andy Irvine, in December 1972 against the All Blacks and was a key member of a high-class Scotland team that rarely lost at Murrayfield but could not win on the road. He proved, however, that he could play further afield as a two-time British & Irish Lions tourist who established himself in the Test team on “the Invincibles” tour of South Africa
in 1974.

By the time McGeechan quit playing in 1979, Telfer had already established his coaching credentials and was on the point of taking over as Scotland coach. During his initial period in charge, the team won in Wales for the first time in 20 years and in a Test match in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time ever when they beat the Wallabies.

Those successes earned him selection as the British & Irish Lions coach for their ill-fated 1983 tour of New Zealand and, reckoned to be deeply disillusioned afterwards, he had to be persuaded by senior Scotland players to return as national coach for the 1983/84 season.

A drawn match with the All Blacks set the scene for what was to come as Scotland’s first Grand Slam in 59 years was won in 1984. McGeechan subsequently returned to the national camp as assistant coach to Derrick Grant in 1986, taking over as head coach in 1988 with Telfer joining him as forwards coach.

“Geech” having been head coach for the Lions as they won a brutal Test series in Australia in 1989, he and Telfer then guided Scotland to the 1990 Grand Slam and only World Cup semi-final the following year.

McGeechan’s Lions were beaten in New Zealand in 1993, but the pair came back together once again for the fabled 1997 tour of South Africa which produced another series win. As Scotland’s national director of rugby Telfer subsequently took over as caretaker head coach in 1998, overseeing the surprise 1999 Five Nations win, Scotland’s last major success while, having also had a spell as Scotland’s director of rugby, McGeechan went on to some success as a club coach, most notably winning the 2005 Heineken Cup when director of rugby at Wasps.

They were, however, at their very best when working together on the training ground.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

By no means as humourless as his image suggests Telfer could be entertaining company, but was never anything other than an imposing figure who retained the capacity to terrorise many players over many years.

The All Blacks were his Nemesis, inviting conjecture that his admiration for and enthusiasm for their methods restricted his teams’ chances of beating them, but they came mighty close on several occasions and he would have enjoyed the compliment attributed to the great New Zealand lock Colin Meads that: “He [Telfer] should have been an All Black forward.”

After the Lions were accused of battering their way to success on the 1989 tour of Australia, McGeechan, meanwhile, claimed to be happy to be regarded Down Under as rugby’s Douglas Jardine, but in reality liked to be liked and was very much the good cop to Telfer’s bad cop, constantl talking up his players.

While passionate in seeking Scottish success, breaking new ground with hundreds of unpaid hours poring over video analysis in the still amateur days in the late-1980s and early-1990s, he also noted, when subsequently being touted for the England head coach’s job, that he was “a product of English rugby”.

That background perhaps contributed well to his success as both player and coach, offering insight into the very different mentalities of players brought up in the different environments of English and Celtic rugby, offering an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both.

34

Ally McCoist

When you score your first goal for Rangers, 33 seconds into your debut, against Celtic, you kind of endear yourself to your loyal support.

Or at least you should . . . but it took Gers fans a while to take to McCoist, leading the line for a beleaguered Rangers who were struggling to keep up with the likes of Aberdeen, Dundee United and Celtic.

Another match against Celtic, however, the 1984 League Cup final, turned his Ibrox career around. Rangers won 3-2, McCoist netting a hat-trick, a swift response to Jock Wallace’s threat to send him to Cardiff City on loan.

While McCoist endured an at times turbulent relationship with Graeme Souness – although he continued to score the goals – it was under Walter Smith, in particular in tandem with Mark Hateley, that he really thrived, playing a key part of the Ibrox club’s extended run of success through the 1990s.

The predatory striker would twice win the European Golden Boot title in 1992 and 1993 – the first Scot to do so – on both occasions with 34 goals, though he surely would have netted more that second season had he not broken his leg while playing for Scotland that April in Portugal.

Typically, McCoist confirmed his return six months later with an overhead kick winner against Hibs to land Rangers the League Cup. Having started his Gers career with a goal, McCoist bowed out at Rangers with another, but not the winner, as Hearts won the 1998 Scottish Cup final.

At international level, ‘Super Ally’ played 61 times, netting 19 goals, including Scotland’s only goal of Euro 96. Having been omitted from the France ’98 squad, McCoist, now a Kilmarnock player, was recalled by Craig Brown.

The player would turn coach, part of Walter Smith’s international set-up, along with Tommy Burns, before following Smith back to Rangers in 2007, as his No.2, before taking over as manager at the start of the 2011/12 season, which would become the most traumatic in the history of Rangers.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

An unsuccessful bid for a third successive promotion, which would have steered trouble-torn Rangers back to the top tier of Scottish football, has been allowed to overshadow everything McCoist previously achieved as a player and, as assistant to Walter Smith.

Be in no doubt, McCoist always will be a Rangers legend – 355 goals cemented that a while back. And, equally, legendary, especially during his playing days, was his bad time keeping.

Rangers’ leading scorer, McCoist was also a leader in other ways, grasping the opportunity to make a career off-field on TV and elsewhere. While an out-and-out winner on the pitch, his cheeky-chappie, quick-witted good nature made him a natural for television, from his early summarising appearances at Junior Cup finals, to his partnership with Fred MacAuley on BBC Scotland, a starring role in movie A Shot At Glory with no less than Robert Duvall and, in among other punditry duties, an 11-year stint as a captain on the BBC’s A Question of Sport.

I was an avid watcher, if only to see how Ally would make use of the various “cheats” I’d give him during hurried phone calls ahead of each recording. We’d have got away with it had Ally not rumbled us both during a TV interview at The Crucible with fellow captain John Parrott!

33

Gavin Hastings

Selected as one of six debutants for the start of the 1986 Five Nations Championship, a group that also included brother Scott and fellow future Scotland captains Finlay Calder and David Sole, ‘“Big Gav” made a huge early impact in what would become customary fashion.

Sending the ball directly into touch, effectively setting up a crafty French try within seconds of kick-off, he redeemed himself with six successful kicks at goal in an 18-17 win, Scotland going on to share the title with the French.

In the next nine years there were further extreme highs and lows, starting all three Tests as the Lions defeated Australia in the 1989 Test series, playing a part, albeit not as the main goal-kicker, in the 1990 Grand Slam campaign, missing the kick in front of the posts that probably cost Scotland a place in the 1991 World Cup final, captaining the 1993 Lions in New Zealand, but losing it 3-0 and, in his last Five Nations campaign, scoring the try, courtesy of Gregor Townsend’s “Toony flip” that registered a first Scotland win in Paris for 26 years.

He was carried shoulder high from the field after Scotland scored a then record 30 points against the All Blacks in his last Test, the 1995 World Cup quarter-final, albeit the opposition, inspired by the even bigger back three man Jonah Lomu, scored 48.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

It is no great comment on what has happened in the two decades and more since he retired that Gavin Hastings, who called it a day following Scotland’s last ever match before the sport went open, remains more immediately recognisable in the public eye than any of the players who have represented the national team in the professional era.

The highly popular Chris Paterson has gone on to smash his points-scoring record and set a new appearance record, while it is highly debatable whether Gavin was as good a player as his younger brother who outlasted him in the Scotland team, but he was one of those players around whom things happened and who consequently captured the imagination of an audience beyond rugby.

32

Graeme Obree

He has expressed regret about having revealed that parts of a washing machine were involved in the making of his “Old Faithful” bike, but for all that it made for easy headlines it is principally referred to out of admiration for a supreme innovator.

It was as much the riding positions that he built his machines
to accommodate that set him apart but, at the peak of his powers, he twice broke the world hour record in 1993 and 1994 and was twice the individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. Two of those riding positions – the first involving tucking in his elbows while leaning his torso over the handlebars and the second in what became known as the “superman position”– would be outlawed by the sport’s governing body on grounds of safety at a time when he was embarrassing the corporations that manufactured racing bikes.

They did not prevent him being competitive but there was a striking contrast between the efforts the Union Cyclist International went to in preventing him from gaining a competitive advantage and their failure to prevent the doping that was escalating during the nineties and would continue to for many years thereafter.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

There is a terrible danger of being glib or, worse still, crass when examining the career of Graeme Obree, the cyclist, in the context of the life of Graeme Obree, the human being. Only he can possibly know the correlation between his shameful treatment at the hands of cycling authorities and what has triggered his problems in battling with bipolarity and his sexual identity in the course of a fascinating contribution to his own and the wider world.

However, that others in his sport have made millions while he has battled for funding for his various projects in an era that has seen cycling battle to save it soul, Obree’s treatment offers damning insight into how the sport has been run since no other leading competitor of his generation is as removed from the suspicion that blights every outstanding cycling achievement of the past 20 years and more.

In light of all we now know, as well as having been a great innovator he must be remembered as the man who turned down the opportunity to have a big money career because he felt he was being told that part of the deal was that he would have to take drugs to be competitive.

31

Katherine Grainger

All three of Scotland’s biggest cities can lay claim to this rowing powerhouse who was born in Glasgow, brought up in Aberdeen
and studied at Edinburgh University where she took up her sport
in 1993.

Her talent was identified while there, as she was awarded the
Eva Bailey Trophy as the university’s outstanding female athlete in 1996. Her first international success came a year later with a gold medal at the World Under-23 rowing championships.

It is, however, her Olympic odyssey that saw her join Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent as household names who helped change the image of their sport. While her world championship haul of six gold medals bears comparison with their nine apiece, Grainger repeatedly came up just short at the Olympics, returning home with silver medals from both Sydney and Beijing in quadruple sculls and, in between times, Athens in the coxless pairs.

That long-awaited victory was all the sweeter when it arrived with Anna Watkins in her annus miraibilis of 2012, during which she also completed her PhD, but there was one more near miss to follow last year when, with Vicky Thornley, she was not quite able to defend that double sculls title. 

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

She joked about her mother having welcomed the fact that men
had tracked down her email address to offer marriage proposals following that long-awaited gold medal triumph in London, but it was all those years spent as a sporting bridesmaid that made the victory with Watkins so special.

30

John Higgins

There were always great things expected of John Higgins, long before he became the “Wizard of Wishaw.” In 1991, all the hype before the start of the junior tournament at the inaugural World Masters at Birmingham’s NEC was around a 15-year-old by the name of Ronnie O’Sullivan but, when the equally young Higgins despatched O’Sullivan and another future world champion Mark Williams in the final, folk sat up and took note, one being Ian Doyle, manager of then world champion Stephen Hendry.

Hendry and Higgins eventually became practice partners and, facing the best in the business every morning, six days a week, rubbed off on Higgins. Within three years, he had won his first ranking event and, by 1998, was world No.1 and world champion. The sorcerer’s apprentice had become a wizard in his own right.

While arch-rivals on the table, Higgins and Hendry were friends, and even team-mates, members of the “Dream Team” Scotland trio (along with Alan McManus) that won the World Cup in 1996 and Nations Cup five years on.

As a player, Higgins has always been an attacking, heavy points scorer, turning many an opponent into a mere spectator. However, on the back foot, Higgins showed a dogged determination to hang in, even when everything was stacked against him. That was best exemplified, when, after being suspended for six months for bringing the game in to disrepute after a tabloid newspaper sting, he returned to take his fourth world title in 2011.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

I was in Dubai in 1994 when all hell let loose and John Higgins left the CueMasters management stable. Would he sink or swim?

It didn’t take long to find out. Within a few weeks, I was the only Scottish journalist back watching John, this time in the cooler climes of Derby, in the final of the Grand Prix where he trounced Dave Harold to take his first of 28 ranking titles. Cliff Thorburn had the nickname “The Grinder” but that applied equally well to Higgins.

As a match player, few were equal, never mind better. The irony, in all of this, was that when John started out it was brother Jason who was considered the best snooker player in the Higgins household.

29

Benny Lynch

His rise was meteoric, his popularity unquestioned and his ability confirmed by championship wins and titles including – albeit claims are made on behalf of predecessors Tancy Lee and Jonny Hill – becoming Scotland’s first undisputed, in every sense, world boxing champion. He had it all, but Benny Lynch also had demons, that would end his career aged just 25 and his life eight years later.

Born in 1913 and raised in the Gorbals, where life itself had to be fought for, Lynch first learned his ring craft the hard way, within the brutal confines of local fairground boxing booths, paid five-bob to fight all-comers and all shapes and sizes. That often meant tackling bigger men, Lynch standing only 5ft 4in tall.

What he had, in addition to skill, was an inherent strength and devastating punching power. A Scottish flyweight champion, having beaten Jim Campbell over 15 rounds in Glasgow, by 1935 he was fighting world champion Jackie Brown in a non-title contest, which ended in a draw. Six months later, in September 1935, Lynch faced Brown again, this time in Belle Vue, Manchester, with the British and World flyweight belts on the line. Brown, in front of his home crowd, was on the canvas several times before the fight was halted in just the second round. Benny Lynch was world champion.

He defended successfully against Pat Palmer and beat Filipino Small Montana at the Empire Pool, Wembley to be hailed undisputed champion, then in October 1937, came Lynch’s final hoorah, facing England’s Peter Kane in front of 40,000 at Shawfield. For 12 rounds Kane stalked the Scot, but was then felled by a flashing left hook and finished off in the next round. Lynch drew with Kane the following year, but paid a forfeit having not made the weight. He beat American Jackie Jurich in June 1938, but only after he’d failed to make the weight and was stripped of his title. Lynch had one more fight before his licence was revoked.

His life spiralled out of control; his marriage failed, and alcohol – which he had always battled against – eventually beat him. He died, aged just 33, in 1946.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

The legend of Benny Lynch lives on and, if fundraising is successful, so will his memory in the form of a statue, surely the least the city of Glasgow can afford our first ever world champion.

Lynch’s ongoing battle with drink and weight was once explained to me by the late Charlie Kerr, the legendary trainer at Kelvin ABC, who worked with several champions across the generations and as a teenager knew Lynch.

“They’d taken Benny out, into the Trossachs, to get him away from the distractions of the town. He was training hard, but the weight wasn’t coming off the way it should with the work they were doing and he was spending a lot of time in the toilet. Then they found out that, while the trainers were trying to get his weight down, keeping him away from fluids, he’d been drinking the water out of the cistern. That’s how desperate he was. In the end, it was all desperate and very sad.”