Scotland and Liverpool footballer who later became a popular broadcaster, particularly in the ITV show Saint and GreavsieThe footballer and television personality Ian St John, who has died aged 82 after suffering from cancer, was a pivotal figure in the restoration of Liverpool football club as a leading force in the mid-1960s, both scoring and making goals in a partnership with Roger Hunt that brought three major honours to Anfield. “Saint” made a total of 425 appearances in the red shirt, scoring 118 goals, including the one in 1965 that brought the FA Cup to Anfield for the first time in Liverpool’s 73-year-old history.
Eloquent and passionate, St John was a blunt, combative, highly intelligent character, brave sometimes to the point of idiocy, combustible enough the following year to flatten Fulham’s Mark Pearson with a single punch after the latter had pulled his hair at Craven Cottage. St John then took himself off to the dressing-room without bothering to wait for the referee to pass sentence. “I had a quick temper,” he once acknowledged. “Which was a bad thing. The fact that I wasn’t afraid of anybody was a good thing.”
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