A PROUD Scot and a brilliant human being, Hugh McIlvanney, the greatest sportswriter of them all, has retired from his Sunday Times columnist job at the age of 82.

It may seem strange that The National is carrying these words about a writer on another publication, but in our journalistic trade there are some individuals who transcend all rivalry simply by the lustre of their work. Hugh McIlvanney, OBE, (and why no knighthood?) is the only sportswriter ever to win the UK Journalist of the Year award, and in the opinion of many people like myself, he is the best there has ever been at the science and art of conveying the story of sport in print.

The lad from Kilmarnock started as a news reporter on the Daily Express and The Scotsman before moving south to The Observer, Express and the Sunday Times where his work over decades was simply required reading for anyone interested in sport.

He wrote about sport – especially his favourites of boxing, football and racing – better than anyone, his concise and lyrical prose wedded to a determination to be factual at all times.

He detests the modern fashion for any story to be riddled with quotes, as that reduces the role of the journalist, so Hugh’s latter incarnation as a columnist proved to be fruitful choice. Typically, he did it better than the rest of us.

His contacts are legendary. Muhammad Ali, Matt Busby, Jock Stein, Sir Alex Ferguson, a plethora of other sporting greats and any number of racehorse trainers, owners and jockeys – Hugh was on first name terms with them all, and both Fergie, for whom he ghosted his memoirs, and Ali paid their own tributes to McIlvanney on the occasion of his final column for the Sunday Times.

I have my own couple of tales about Hugh. I was at Epsom to cover the Epsom Derby of 2001 and in the press room I noticed that Hugh was having some trouble with his laptop. Fortunately I was able to supply a fix to help him, and stood beside the great man to watch the race.

As Galileo started his irresistible acceleration to the front over two furlongs out, I heard Hugh give a sort of an exultation of breath, somewhere between a grunt and a ‘wow’, which I described in my book Rock of Gibraltar as a ‘whoosh’. From that day, whenever I see a horse having a ‘whoosh’ moment, I think of Hugh McIlvanney.

One of Hugh’s lifelong friends is Andrew Fyall, one of the best foreign correspondents this country has ever produced and my former boss and mentor. They had been together on the Daily Express in the early 1960s and have stayed friends ever since.

On Andrew’s 70th birthday a crowd of us gathered in an Edinburgh restaurant where we were greeted by champagne – a very good one, too – supplied by McIlvanney who could not make it north that day. A typical gesture by a loyal friend.

I last saw Hugh in December at the funeral of his younger brother William – how could one family produce such giants? – where he gave an emotional and memorable tribute, mentioning Willie’s handsome looks: “He was a braw boy, even as an elderly man.”

There were no words of comfort that could salve his grief, but on these occasions a handshake is often sufficient to convey sympathy.

Like his bother, Hugh’s precisely chosen words could capture a man in a sentence. He once wrote of George Best: “Trying to explain how or why the sight of men playing about with a ball can hold countless millions in thrall from childhood to dotage is a task beyond rational argument. But we never needed anything as prosaic as logic when George was around.”

In his tribute following Sir Matt Busby’s death, Hugh wrote of his old friend: “Greatness does not gad about, reaching for people in handfuls. It settles deliberately on a blessed few, and Matt Busby was one of them. If Busby had stood dressed for the pit, and somebody alongside him in the room had worn ermine, there would have been no difficulty about deciding who was special.”

The great American sportswriter AJ Liebling’s book on the Sweet Science introduced Hugh to the possibilities of writing about sport.

Like Liebling, boxing gave him many memorable words.

“In his prime, Joe Bugner had the physique of a Greek statue, but he had fewer moves,” he wrote of the pedestrian British heavyweight.

Without difficulty I can recall his words on the tragic and painfully shy Welsh champion Johnny Owen who died of injuries received in the ring.

“It was boxing that gave Johnny Owen his one positive means of self-expression,” wrote Hugh. “It is his tragedy that he found himself articulate in such a dangerous language.”

Hugh wrote much about Muhammad Ali, including these lines after the Thrilla in Manila: “His face had the greyness of terminal exhaustion and he moved as if the marrow of his bones had been replaced by mercury.”

Hugh would later say of Ali: “He was the greatest figure in my professional life. There was nobody remotely like him.”

I cannot say that I know Hugh McIlvanney as well as he knew Ali, but my sentiments are the same. McIlvanney is the greatest exponent of sportswriting in history, and the rest of us owe him a vast debt for lending our trade some of his distinction.