HIS specs failed to hide the hint of mischief in his eyes as he would remind the young back-page bucks of the tabloids and broadsheets how they had missed out on seeing the great post-war personalities of Scottish football.
He would regale them, in detail, with tales of George Young, Bobby Evans, Jerry Dawson, Billy Steel, and Lawrie Reilly, and many more, and offer sympathy at what they had to watch on offer from the highly-paid foreign players who dominate our game today.
John Blair, who has died at the age of 84, after a lengthy illness, had such a passion for football that he watched every kick from every game possible on his bedside TV set in St Margaret's Hospice until virtually his final moments.
A founder member in 1957 of the Scottish Football Writers' Association and a past president, John entered sports journalism with the Glasgow Evening News immediately after the Second World War, having served in the Middle East with the Army.
As boxing correspondent of that newspaper, he easily established long-term friendships with fighters like world cham-pion Jackie Paterson, Peter Keenan, Chic Calderwood, Cowboy McCormick, and other ring luminaries of that period.
It was as sports editor of the Sunday People and as a BBC radio contributor that he was accepted by all as the doyen of the sporting press.
He was the respected figure managers such as Jock Stein, Willie Waddell, and Sir Alex Ferguson found they could trust, confide in, and ask opinions of in their developing years.
It was, therefore, no surprise that John was appointed as the first press officer of the SFA prior to the World Cup finals in Spain in 1982 on his retirement from the working press.
It quickly proved to be the vital, much-needed buffer between manager Jock Stein, his squad of players, and the aggressive world media. It was a role he was to fill for some nine years, working alongside Ferguson in Mexico in
1986 and four years later in the World Cup finals in Italy with Andy Roxburgh.
Former Scotland manager Ian McCall, who was a regular visitor to John's hospital bedside, first got to know him while a Rangers player in the early 1950s. He says: ''John Blair was a man everyone trusted. Over the years he helped many young players and young managers to find their way in the game.''
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