At the 1972 British Open Squash Championship two of the world's most famous sportsmen, and the pair that everyone wanted to see going head to head, emerged to contest the final.
The eagerly anticipated contest - for what was then the unofficial world championship - began unpromisingly: the Australian Geoff Hunt won a facile first set 9/0.
It was then that his Irish opponent, Jonah Barrington, demonstrated the tigerish qualities for which he had become renowned. In what is regarded as one of the greatest squash matches ever, he dug deeply into reserves of fitness acquired while training at altitude in Kenya. Continually retrieving Hunt's best shots, he clawed his way back to square the match at two sets all.
In the decisive fifth set, the Australian re-established dominance to take an apparently unassailable 7/0 lead - but two murderous hours of intense exchanges had left him with an empty tank. As Hunt cramped under the intense pressure, Barrington levelled the match and then pulled ahead to win 9/7. Afterwards the Irishman was too exhausted to walk and had to be helped to his changing-room.
During the 1970s Jonah Barrington became an internationally renowned sportsman and almost single-handedly made squash one of the world's most glamorous sports. No squash player before or since has enjoyed such worldwide recognition. Yet in his early life Ireland's most famous racquet sportsman showed unexceptional sporting prowess and his academic career also suffered from a lack of discipline when he failed to graduate from Trinity College, Dublin. Once he discovered squash, however, his commitment was total, and in this regard he raised the bar for all subsequent sportsmen.
Squash is a singular pastime. Participants not only arm themselves with long and potentially dangerous racquets, but also - in contrast to sports such as tennis and badminton - they compete within a small and claustrophobic space enclosed by walls of concrete or glass. In this hothouse environment they battle continually to dominate the vital centre of the court. The battle is shoulder-to-shoulder and eyeball-to-eyeball, and when other factors are equal, victory goes to the player who copes best with the intense mental pressure.
Nowadays winning squash involves successfully combining three components - skill, fitness and psychology. But when Barrington came to the sport, skill was the dominant factor. Almost inevitably, the player with the greatest range of strokes won.
Barrington quickly realised he would never be world champion relying entirely on skill. But what of fitness and psychology? Could he overcome more talented players by depending on total fitness and mental toughness? With incredible single-mindedness he set out to make himself the world's fittest sportsman. He also spent countless solitary hours alone on the squash court to perfect every stroke and angle. Believing that squash was essentially a mental game, he practised the tactic of using his extraordinary mobility to make seemingly impossible returns in the belief that, unable to play a wining shot, opponents would lose self-belief and become resigned to defeat.
"Wherever you play it, I'll get it," became Barrington's mantra. And it worked. Armed with a new concept of "total squash", he transformed the court into a personal amphitheatre and competed with the intensity of a gladiator. Opponents were psychologically overwhelmed as Barrington went on to win six British Open titles. In the process he became a sporting superstar and accounts of his exploits were regularly moved from the back to the front pages of newspapers.
Success came at personal cost, however. His body suffered cruelly from the intensity of the hammering it took. Recently, when I spoke with him at his home in England's west country, he talked about the years of pain that resulted from his time as world champion and the toll it took on his body: "I had 12 operations to my hips, elbows, knees and Achilles tendons, all aimed at repairing the damage caused by years of trying to push beyond my physical limits."
He also reminisced about the mental aspects of winning: "I was one of the first sportsmen to train at altitude and the benefits were as much psychological as physical. Little was known about altitude training at the time and opponents believed it gave me an insurmountable advantage. Many had already lost the mind game before they even came on court."
Today Jonah runs a squash academy at the exclusive Millfield School in Somerset, where he coaches young people with ambitions to reach the top. So what advice would he give to up and coming Irish players with similar aspirations? "First you must love the sport as I did, but you must also accept the discipline of the daily off-court grind to maintain total fitness. Nobody wins at the top level without first putting in the hard yards."
Are young Irish players taking this advice - and can we produce another Barrington? This weekend offers the opportunity to find the answer. The world's leading squash exponents are in Dublin to compete with the best Irish players at the Irish Open Squash championships in Fitzwilliam. The tournament continues today and concludes tomorrow afternoon with the men's and ladies' finals.