"I wonder how many readers have actually played the old Fife miners game of quoits? No not that daft hoopla game with the rubber rings but the tough traditional sport that was played in Scotland for generations.

Quoiting - pronounced kiting - had tens of thousands of participants all over the country at the height of its popularity before the war; almost every place in Scotland had a quoiting team with greens located alongside the local pub.

Big crowds watched the games and it was a great occasion for gambling. The local press devoted many column inches to the local games played each week.

In Scotland, the old game is played on an 18-yard pitch with the object being to throw, underhand, a 16lb quoit - a D-shaped ring of iron - as near as possible to the ''pin'', or at least closer than your opponent. Similar to bowls.

The pin is a three-foot metal rod sunk to its narrowed half-inch neck in a deep pit of clay. Since the head of the pin cannot be seen from the footing board - the area where the quoit is thrown - a scrap of paper is stuck to the clay as a guide by ‘a lighter’.

A quoit in ancient times was synonymous with a discus, and the Greeks passed on quoits, a weapon of war, to the Romans who also brought the game to these shores. There are of course some similarities to the American game of horseshoes but you can’t ring the pin in quoiting, it is sunk flush with the clay bed.

It was a game played by strong brawny men – hence the sport of miners. The ladies game was unheard of – the weaker sex couldn’t throw 16lb weights over an 18 yard distance with the winner requiring 61 points.

Lochgelly in particular was the bastion of quoiting in Fife. It produced a champion in the great Willie Watters (Watters Crescent is named in his honour). There was a quoiting ground at the Jubilee in Auchterderran Road and at the Minto in Bank Street as well as a few others.

Watters and his ilk played men from all round the country with huge purses at stake and major side bets were the norm. Watters’ great rivals included Thomas Bone of Glenbuck (home of Bill Shankly) who beat him in the 1889 Scottish Championship at Glasgow, by 61- 58. They had many historic battles.

Other famed champions included Andrew Connel of Darvel and Robert Kirkwood of Banknock. Watters was a champion for decades. For example, he was still to the fore in 1919. That year he defeated Kirkwood by a crushing 61-28 to win the Scottish title and £100.

He had beaten Kirkwood to win a purse of £200 in 1900 – the biggest stake ever offered in a quoiting match. Willie Watters died in 1936. For most of the period 1895 to 1927 he was Scottish champion. Willie also twice carried off the British Championship.

Another Lochgelly quoiter was Dave Bain. Dave was a well regarded full back who came from Lochgelly. He played for Cowdenbeath for one season and most of his career was spent with Lochgelly United. Bain also enjoyed two separate spells with Hearts and was a very successful quoiter.

His nephew, John 'Tokey' Duncan played for Lochgelly Utd, Raith Rovers, Leicester City and Scotland. Tokey's niece, Elsie Duncan from Lochgelly, was the wife of Don Revie. Dave Bain died in January 1930 at the age of 46.

In 1954 the firm of Johnstone Forge Ltd closed its doors for the last time and it was the last firm in Britain to make traditional quoits. The old game though survives and is still sporadically played in Wales and Scotland.

Scotland now has around a dozen clubs, under the control of the Scottish Quoiting Association, whilst Wales has only a few clubs, based around Dyfed and Powys. There is an international each year between the countries. A far cry though from the days when crowds thronged to Lochgelly for a big match involving Watters – and the attendant betting frenzy it created."