Alex Higgins: Star Snooker Player finally defeated by Cancer
Alex Higgins was a brilliant snooker player. He was also one of the most colourful characters to grace the game in a long time. Being a heavy drinker and an even heavier smoker finally got the better of the player when he passed away at the age of 61 recently due to throat cancer. He lived a great life until the last few years of it and was a well loved man by his friends and his fans all over the world. He himself stated that it was smoking that killed him in the end and he was a testament to the evils of smoking. He was a great man and a great snooker player.
Alex Higgins rose to prominence during the 1970s and 80s in the world of snooker. He was born in Belfast and was the best player to emerge from Northern Ireland during that time. He won the Snooker World Championship in 1972 at the age of 22 and then won it again a decade later in 1982. He was a very uncharacteristic snooker player, he would be seen smoking during games and was almost as at home in the pub as he was at the snooker table. After playing snooker for many years and living the good life, he developed throat cancer ten years ago because of his heavy smoking and was found dead in his flat on Saturday. He was 61 years old and he had finally succumbed to the throat cancer that had been eating away at him for the last decade. His weight had plummeted to 7 stone and he had lost all of his teeth because of complications from undergoing almost 40 doses of chemotherapy to try and combat the disease. Even though he was half the man he used to be, his fighting spirit was still intact because he was thinking about suing the cigarette manufacturer again who had sponsored him during his career; Benson and Hedges.
Besides battling cancer for the last decade, Hurricane Higgins as he was known was not one to shy away from the press. This May he came out with a huge announcement that claimed that he knew of four top players in the game of snooker who had taken bribes to throw matches and lose on purpose. Even though he did not say who those four players were, he did say that he himself had also been offered £18,000 to throw a match in 1979 and £20,000 to do the same ten years later. He says he rejected both offers because he would not be able to live with himself if he had taken the money from the bookies. Snooker has been rocked recently with allegations of match fixing and dodgy behaviour by players who in some cases took money from bookies to throw matches and other times had bet on themselves to lose games. Higgins claimed that many famous players were guilty of working with bookies and it would shock fans and the press if their names ever came to light.
Controversy followed him throughout his life and made him an instant fan favourite. It was because of his on screen and off screen antics that made him loved by his fans and the press. In 1986 Higgins was banned for 5 tournaments after he head-butted UK tournament director Paul Hatherall who had asked him to undergo a drugs test. In 1990, he threatened to have a fellow snooker player shot and he punched a tournament press officer. These outbursts forced him to enter tournaments at the qualifying stage and it started the decline of his career from which he never recovered. He tried many times to revive his career but was unable to. Even though he was loved for his outbursts, they eventually led to his downfall.
Higgins was a fighter who survived cancer once, then went back to smoking. He claimed towards the end of his life that he was a walking advertisement for what smoking can do to a person. He said that he smoked so much because he did not know its harmful effects and tried to sue Benson and Hedges a few times but could not go through with it. The life of this great and controversial snooker player who brought the game to the public and popularised it like no one else had before, ended painfully and we should all remember him as the great and colourful player he used to be when he was at the top of his game. He gave the world of snooker so much and he will be sorely missed by all his fans all over the world.
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