RIP Hugh McIlvanney

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/theofficialfwa/status/1088601201288118272

[Lang Spoon]

Ach.

[Satchmo Distel]

A journalist whose writing rose to the level of the events he covered - World Cups, Ali fights, etc. From the days I would spend 4 hours reading The Observer.

[ursus arctos]

Ah crap.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yes. One of the best in his field. Farewell.

[RobM]

Bugger it. Great documenter of the greats from the Ayrshire coalfields and other big Scottish managers. One of the few Scottish spotswriters to deserve the name, might be the best in fact.

[tee rex]

When I was a kid I'd try and grab the Observer first every Sunday to read two things above all else: Clive James' TV reviews, and Hugh McIlvanney on sport. If Dad got hold of the paper first it was going to be a long morning, waiting while he read it on the bog.

Perhaps the best general sports writer of his generation (and he spanned several). RIP.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Fantastic writer. His contemporary accounts of the 1966 and 1970 World Cups are easily the best of their kind ever written - I wholeheartedly recommend scouring abebooks.com for copies of both if you don't have them.

[wittoner]

Yes, Sundays from about 1975-1985 meant "The Observer" for me too and McIlvanney was a big part of that. A terrific writer.
His TV documentaries on Stein, Busby and Shankly were magnificent too.

[Sporting]

When I was a kid I'd try and grab the Observer first every Sunday to read two things above all else: Clive James' TV reviews, and Hugh McIlvanney on sport. If Dad got hold of the paper first it was going to be a long morning, waiting while he read it on the bog.

Didn't it come in various sections, though, or was that a more modern development? If the former, then your pa was really being pretty mean, if you don't mind my saying say.

[Sits]

He sensibly took the sports section first.

RIP. They really, really don't make sportswriters like him any more.

[blameless]

He sensibly took the sports section first.

RIP. They really, really don't make sportswriters like him any more.

You're right, they really don't.

RIP to the best thing ever to happen to a sportsdesk.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Nice H Mc story from Clive Whittingham

"Back in the Italia 90 World Cup a group of the more senior, grizzled sports journalists on the circuit hatched a plan to get from a game in Milan’s San Siro Stadium one evening down to Rome’s Stadio Olympico for another the following day by hiring a car and sharing the driving through the night. As they were loading up after the final whistle, Sheffield Wednesday manager Howard Wilkinson came haring across the car park looking for a lift. He was there scouting for Bobby Robson’s England set up, famously reporting back that Cameroon were “rubbish” before the African side gave the Three Lions the fright of their lives in the knockout.

Begrudgingly, he was allowed to take the spare seat in the car but as the journey began it became clear that while the hacks saw the trip as a chance to catch up on some sleep, he saw an opportunity to make it clear just how much more he knew about football than them and set sail on long, drawn out, tactical breakdown of what teams were doing at the World Cup. This was stomached for a small while before Hugh McIllvanney, without opening his eyes, asked: “Howard, if you know so much about football, why are your Sheffield Wednesday team so dreadful to watch?” Another prolonged reply came forth, basically saying that if Sheff Wed had the use of Ruud Gullit, Franz Beckenbauer, Roberto Baggio and others then they wouldn’t play football in the style they did. McIlvanney came back on this without missing a beat, saying: “Howard, if Ruud Gullit, Franz Beckenbauer and Roberto Baggio were playing for Sheffield Wednesday, you wouldn’t be the fucking manager.” They slept in peace for the rest of the trip."

[Lang Spoon]

Heheh. I guess this just leaves Granville from that generation. And tbh he isn't fit to mention in the same sentence as the Great Man.

[George]

Wilkinson had been Leeds manager for two seasons by the time of Italia 90, although I appreciate that doesn't really diminish the moral of the story.

[Nefertiti2]

Kevin Mitchell in the Guardian
"Allied to his great style was McIlvanney’s huge admiration for the characters of sport, and he never lost faith in his heroes, however flawed. Nobody gave George Best more rope. And Ali stood tallest for him, even when palsied after a boxing career that lingered too long. There was no doubt in McIlvanney’s mind that Muhammad (as he insisted on calling him) was The Greatest, as a human being and an athlete.

“His boxing was totally idiosyncratic,” he said, “and technically at a level much lower than that of Sugar Ray Robinson. Muhammad was in a sense the eternal amateur, but he was God’s amateur, because the will was so magical, the imagination so magical, that he found a way to beat people.”

It was the perfect metaphor for McIlvanney’s career: the raw yet refined genius from the north who invariably finished in front, sometimes despite himself. His writing – his reporting, as he would have it – was a triumph of the imagination.

[Satchmo Distel]

Heheh. I guess this just leaves Granville from that generation. And tbh he isn't fit to mention in the same sentence as the Great Man.

Played by David Jason?

[Lang Spoon]

Heheh, always do that with his name, like Craig Murray/brown.

[Satchmo Distel]

And there are (at least) two Craig Browns.