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The Fixture met Alex Higgins in a Belfast pub once. Lean and wizened it was a few years before he died of multiple causes as a result of throat cancer but, even then, he was unmistakable in his fedora and cravat, hunched over a newspaper with a pint of porter within easy reach of that magical right hand. Yes, the ravages of the illness were apparent but there were still traces of The Hurricane flickering behind the eyes. Sitting at a table with a couple of mates, he recognised my brother – then an Irish League footballer of some repute – as he went to the bar. Higgins called him over and gave him some words of encouragement and then proceeded to buy our table a drink.

That was Higgins in a nutshell. To mangle a well-worn Belfast colloquialism, you were never quite sure whether he was going to kiss you or fight you, and, on this occasion, it was the lovable Higgins who had walked into the bar that early Sunday afternoon.

This little vignette returned to my thinking when Neil Foulds, the Eurosport snooker commentator, lamented the size of the pockets at this year's ongoing World Championships at The Crucible in Sheffield during the second-round encounter between John Higgins and Kyren Wilson. Foulds, a former World Championship semi-finalist during The Hurricane's time as a player, had just watched Higgins botch a pot on the black which travelled along the bottom cushion before it started to roll away from the cushion . . . and then slowly disappeared into the pocket.

“How on earth?" asked Foulds. “That's ridiculous. I've got to make this statement, and I don't want to detract from any of the play, because the standard has been brilliant. I never bang on about conditions. This table has played easy, very easy all week. Not to say these players are not brilliant at what they do. That had no right to go in.”

Foulds' observations caused a minor stir but it was not the only controversy snooker found itself caught up in recent days. The Just Stop Oil protest, during which an activist interrupted play by clambering onto a table and dousing himself in orange dust, made front-page news but it was tame stuff compared to the shenanigans Higgins used to find himself embroiled in.

The Herald:

The size of the pockets was a matter which frustrated him immensely back in his pomp – along with a manner of perceived slights that usually ended with the Northern Irishman taking aim at all and sundry – whether it was referees, sponsors, fellow opponents or all three at once. He regularly took offence at what he called “pool table pockets” usually, it must be said, in the aftermath of a defeat.

He once headbutted a World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association official after being asked to take a drugs test in 1986, punched a WPBSA press officer after losing his first-round match at the World Championship and threatened to have Dennis Taylor shot after rowing with his fellow Ireland team-mate at the World Cup in 1990.

The Just Stop Oil protest might have been a colourful interruption to the early matches of the tournament and Foulds might have ruffled a few feathers with his comments about the pocket size but it's worth assessing the incidents with a degree of context: they are nothing compared to the devastation wreaked when The Hurricane blew his top.