As a sports writer, he was widely considered to be in a league of his own.

Regarded as one of the greatest in his field, tributes flowed in for Hugh McIlvanney yesterday after news of his death at the age of 84.

Born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, he went on to bear witness to some of the most significant sporting events in history, including the momentous 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman and England’s World Cup win in 1966; his way with words ensuring his own place in the history books.

McIlvanney was also in Munich to cover the Olympic Games in 1972 when 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by a terror group.

And over his 60-year career, he forged strong friendships with four of Scotland’s most iconic football managers – Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly, Sir Alex Ferguson and Jock Stein.

He found himself sadly tasked with writing about the death of Stein after the World Cup qualifying game in Cardiff in 1985 when he collapsed in the dugout.

Writing of his friend’s sudden passing, he said: “The larcenous nature of death, its habit of breaking in on us when we are least prepared and stealing the irreplaceable, has seldom been more sickeningly experienced than at Ninian Park in Cardiff on Tuesday night.”

Of George Best, he wrote he had “feet as sensitive as a pickpocket’s hands,” whose “control of the ball under the most violent pressure was hypnotic”.

McIlvanney, whose brother was crime novelist William – who passed away in 2015, aged 79 – was remembered by BBC Match of the Day host, Gary Lineker, 
yesterday as “truly one of the greatest sports writers of all time”.

Lineker tweeted: “His gravelly Scottish voice will be missed almost as much as his wonderful copy.”

Fellow Scot and impressionist Rory Bremner paid tribute to a man who was “a wonderful, wonderful writer and great company”.

And his nephew, crime writer Liam McIlvanney, son of William, wrote on Twitter: “Very sad to hear this news. A great man, a great writer. Thoughts with Caroline, Liz and Conn. Rest In Peace, Uncle Hughie.”

McIlvanney began working for titles including his local paper, the Kilmarnock Standard, as well as The Scotsman, The Daily Express, The Observer and The Sunday Times.

Particularly well known as the master of football and boxing coverage, he wrote a number of books on those sports and also on horse racing, while Sir Alex turned to him for assistance with his autobiography, Managing My Life.

Reflecting on his career upon his retirement in 2016, he said his greatest scoop was when Ali invited him into his villa only hours after he regained the world heavyweight title in Zaire in 1974.

His words from that two-hour interview are still recalled today.

He wrote of Ali “lying back on the thick cushions of an armchair in his villa, with the windows curtained against an angry sun that was threatening to evaporate the Zaire River as it slid like a grassy ocean past his front door, he talked with the quiet contentment of a man whose thoughts were acting on him as comfortingly as the hands of a good masseur.”

Ali memorably told the Scot that day: “I kicked a lot of asses – not only George’s. All those writers who said I was washed up, all those people who thought I had nothin’ left to offer but my mouth, all them that been against me from the start and waitin’ for me to get the biggest beatin’ of all times. They thought big bad George Foreman, the baddest man alive, could do it for them but they know better now.”

And McIlvanney, remembering that scoop, said: “It was by far the greatest privilege I’ve ever had as a reporter.”

Shortly before his brother’s death four years ago, he told the BBC in a documentary about their childhood that they – and their two other brothers – learned their love of words from their mother, who was an avid reader.

McIlvanney said: “That feeling you had of being constantly within warmth and within protection was one of the greatest gifts.

“One of my mother’s favourite sayings was ‘we are better off than better folk’.”
The Football Writers’ Association, of which McIlvanney was a life member, called him “one of the true greats of sports writing”.

Paul Webster, editor of The Observer, said: “Hugh McIlvanney was a giant among journalists, a powerful and beautiful writer whose coverage of some of the great sporting events of his era is still talked about.”

Celtic FC tweeted yesterday that McIlvanney was a “legendary journalist”, adding: “The thoughts and prayers of everyone at Celtic FC are with Hugh McIlvanney’s family and friends at this sad time.”