Hugh Mcilvanney
remembered Brian Glanville
Among my many vivid memories of the late, much lamented and most accomplished of sports writers, Hugh Mcilvanney, who died in January aged 84, one in particular stands out – though it has nothing to do with the sports journalism at which he excelled.
It took place in as obscure a location as a small football pitch, with no nets to the goals, on Wormwood Scrubs, at a time when such small fields abounded.
Hugh was playing, as was I, for my little Sunday club, Chelsea Casuals, against a predominantly Scottish team, a vociferous ensemble known as Rothwell.
We were a goal down, with time running out, when Hugh fastened on to the ball and, with a gloriously struck, right-footed shot, found the top righthand corner of the netless goal posts to give us a breathless draw.
He was an accomplished footballer – a natural inside right, as we used to call it in those days – highly combative with that powerful right foot, strategic awareness and a strong, justified sense of his own talents. I remember him once shouting at me, on one of those same Wormwood Scrubs pitches, after a mild altercation, ‘You wish you had my talent.’
He made an excellent captain for the Casuals. The only game in which he was hardly his able self was in Sussex against the first XI of Lancing College. He arrived very late, dropped off from a car by the leading jockey of the time, Josh Gifford. Alas the car drove off with all Hugh’s kit
in the boot, and he had to borrow what he could, including a bizarrely long pair of shorts, to take part in the game. For once, he played what might politely be described as a peripheral part. Deprived as we were of his usual exemplary presence, we lost the game.
I have often wondered what might have transpired had the Daily Express, then a hugely selling paper, acquired him as its sports columnist rather than giving him a general column in 1972.
To its shame, the Express chose to persevere with a blatant fantasist as its sports columnist: Desmond Hackett. Hackett – whose name became cockney rhyming slang for ‘jacket’ – was guilty of fabricating his resourceful role in what was known as the Battle of Berne in the
1954 World Cup when, far from being manhandled by Swiss police, he never left the press box. His paper was so pleased with the piece that it bought him a suit and a watch, and gave him a bonus.
Mcilvanney never seemed happy at the Express. By 1973, he was back at the Observer, which he first joined in 1962. He stayed there until 1993, when he moved to the Sunday Times. As a sports writer, Mcilvanney resumed his excellence as a supreme expert on football, boxing and racing.
Raymond Briggs is away