Ex-world champ 'Hurricane' Higgins dies
Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, the former double world snooker
champion, died on Saturday at the age of 61 after a long battle
with throat cancer.
The flamboyant Belfast-born snooker legend, who won the world
title in 1972 and 1982, was first diagnosed with cancer more than
10 years ago.
Despite being warned many times to cut his drinking and smoking
to save his health, Higgins couldn't quit.
He had cancerous growths removed from his mouth in 1994 and 1996
and was told in 1998 that he had throat cancer.
Snooker promoter Barry Hearn said Higgins would be remembered as
the "original people's champion" and the man who transformed the
popularity of the sport.
Hearn said: "I have known him for nearly 40 years. He was the
major reason for snooker's popularity in the early days.
"He was controversial at times, but he always played the game in
the right spirit. We will miss him - he was the original people's
champion."
Steve Davis was one of Higgins's greatest rivals in the 1980s
and he said: "Alex was quite a fierce competitor, he lived and
breathed the game, very much a fighter on the table.
"It was a love-hate relationship with Alex Higgins. The thrill
of playing him was fantastic, but the crowd that came along were
not your usual crowd. They were much more noisy and you had to play
the crowd as well. To many people in the 1980s he was the only
player they came to watch."
"I used to be quite frightened of him as an individual. But on
the snooker table, my admiration was immense."
Davis admitted Higgins was a controversial figure due to his
erractic behaviour but insisted he will always be best remembered
as a snooker genius.
"To people in the game he was a constant source of argument, he
was a rebel. But to the wider public he was a breath of fresh air
that drew them in to the game," Davis said.
"He was an inspiration to my generation to take the game up. I
do not think his contribution to snooker can be underestimated.
"No one player has ever been bigger than the game. But he
brought a genius quality that possibly hadn't been seen before.
"He was one of two or three people I would put the word 'genius'
to when it came to the table."
Higgins was one of the sport's greatest entertainers, but away
from the table his private life was a chaotic whirlwind of drink,
womanising, fights, illness and debt.
He earned millions in the years when snooker was a British
national obsession, but blew it all in a long and turbulent descent
into homelessness and drink.
His career disintegrated in a blizzard of fines, bans and
court-cases and he was left penniless after losing his luxury house
in Cheshire, northern England to the taxman.
He was divorced by two wives, Cara and Lynn, and was stopped
from seeing his two children, Lauren and Jordan.
Higgins claimed the world champion's crown at the first attempt,
aged 22, and took it back again ten years later from Ray Reardon at
the Crucible in Sheffield.
Many feel Higgins's finest hour came the following year at
Preston Guildhall, when he came back from 7-0 down against the
seemingly unbeatable Davis to win the 1983 United Kingdom
championship final 16-15.
His fall from grace began in the same hall three years later,
when he headbutted an official and was fined and banned for the
next five major tournaments.
He slipped out of the top 100 rankings in 1997 and was convicted
in 1996 of assaulting a 14-year-old boy.
Higgins's life continued to unravel in sheltered housing on the
Donegall Road in Belfast, but he kept playing the sport he loved
until his final days.