Quins man Madigan came close to silencing The Lip in Olympics

TONY MADIGAN’S sporting life amounted to a whole lot more than a few appearances for Harlequins in the early 1950’s. He deserves a rare footnote in rugby history as the only player to stand toe-to-toe with the most famous sportsman of the 20th century.

The mighty Quin boxed Muhammad Ali twice back in the day when ‘The Lip’ still went by the name Cassius Clay and took him the distance on each occasion, during an inter-city Golden Gloves promotion in Chicago in 1959, then again at the Rome Olympiad the following year.

In a heavyweight semi-final, Madigan lost on points and ended up with the bronze medal. According to at least two professors of pugilism who witnessed the contest, it was such a close-run thing that Clay could just as easily have lost his toughest bout of the Games.

By then Madigan, born and bred in Sydney, had moved from London to New York where he found work as a male model, his looks apparently none the worse for having trained with the then world heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson, and one of his successors, Jose Torres.

A double Commonwealth gold medallist, at Cardiff in 1958 and Perth four years later, Madigan stayed amateur throughout a boxing career that spanned three Olympiads and a rugby one that stretched to three clubs in three continents – Randwick, Harlequins and Westchester. He died in the south of France last month at the age of 87 after a long battle against Alzheimer’s.