Still the people's champion

Johnny Watterson observes as Alex Higgins blows back into town one more time.

The boxing writer WC Heinz once wrote that JJ Braddock, the former heavyweight champion of the world, would never appear in any list among the 10 greatest fighters. But in Heinz's appreciation of Braddock as the boxer, he saw something more important. He saw the character, the frailties and the personal calamities.

Heinz added: "He may, however, in the sense that others see themselves in him and read their own struggles into his, have belonged to more people than any other champion who ever lived."

So. We are led towards Alex Higgins. Public ownership of the 56-year-old was floated on the snooker exchange 35 years ago and the public bought in heavily. This is Tallaght, and not for the first time in his career the mountain has been asked to move to Allah. Three print journalists, a few radio stations and two camera crews weave through the back of the Spawell. Through a door, up a stairway, through an empty, dimly-lit room with covered snooker tables and large men sitting on straight-backed chairs in corners with their arms folded.

We walk through the curtained anteroom, where Higgins is retiring early noon. Tony Soprano in the Bada Bing may have choreographed the scene, but there on the table beside the gaming machines is the black fedora, the pint of Guinness and, in startled repose, "The Hurricane".

"What sort of form are you in?" he is asked.

"Well, hopefully not chloroform," he snaps, his spectacles teetering on the end of his nose. Higgins is joking and we are fantastically relieved.

"Fair to middlin'," he adds. "Snooker has always been in my veins, in my heart."

Higgins' life has taken him to the game's summit and into troughs of adversity and wretchedness. His most recent and enduring illness, throat cancer, took its toll on the meagre frame of the former apprentice jockey. But today there is some jolliness about Higgins and a little black humour.

"I smoke a bit. I shouldn't," he says. "Radio therapy destroyed the bones in the jaws and all my teeth have gone. I can't enjoy sumptuous meals any more, and it has curtailed my sex life. I couldn't imagine kissing a girl with false teeth," he adds, wandering into more detail than we care for. "I may as well be a Dominican monk with a gambling habit."

How the former double World champion came to be in the Spawell for the Irish Professional Championship was due to Ken Doherty's industry. Doherty rang two weeks ago and asked him to play.

"I was surprised and said, 'what's in it for me'," says Higgins. "He said don't worry, you'll be looked after."

Just when Higgins played in his last professional tournament is open to debate.

"I can't remember," says the man himself in a voice that sometimes breaks into a hoarse draught of air.

Other estimates come at seven years, but Higgins recalls that he played in Derry two years ago.

"I did play in the Irish Championship two years ago. It was defunct until I came on the scene. I won the first one, clinched it at the Shannon Rowing Club in Limerick," he says.

Outside, Gary Hardiman, the Spawell resident professional, is waiting. The main hall is packed with punters, most wanting to see Higgins, with just a few strident voices backing local boy Hardiman. It is 23 minutes past two and the match is scheduled for two.

Higgins shuffles out, his purple bow tie straightened, the fedora in place. Almost 200 faces light up.

Before he has potted a red, he has had a conversation with referee John Doherty mid-frame, ordered two photographers, who are in his eye-line, out of the hall and engaged the front row in a series of short, animated conversations.

When Hardiman is on the table Higgins is either blowing his nose, wiping his face or ordering drinks from a man tactically placed behind his chair, who must go outside and around the building to the bar. It's more like a play than the first round of a professional snooker tournament, and Hardiman has found himself in the middle of the unscripted main act.

At the break Higgins races for the door for a smoke. The referee chases.

In the third frame he concedes by flapping his hands around his head, but does so when Hardiman is at the table lining up a pot.

It is a first session of small breaks and safety play. The Hurricane blows hot and cold. A stunning pot with hard side dances around the table into position for a colour. The crowd applauds, but he misses the straightforward follow-up.

Out of practice and good health, the shots trickle from his slender hands rather than explode.

He loses 5-2.

WC Heinz was correct. People see their own struggles in Higgins. Unlike the fighter, Braddock, the Hurricane would be one of the 10 greatest.