"He had an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time"

Sports photographers are less often celebrated as master craftsmen than the likes of Don McCullin and John Downing, who routinely put their lives on the line in pursuit of a picture. But it's clear from the warmth of the tributes paid to the late Eamonn McCabe that the Guardian's former head of photography was held in extremely high esteem by peers and colleagues alike.

His best sport photos are exceptional - an airborne Maradona felled by a West German slide tackle, table tennis player Li Zhenshi staring up at the ball in apparent awe and anticipation as though it's some kind of celestial orb - and he evidently made good use of his knack for perfect timing in his later portrait work, as well as an innate ability to put his subjects at ease.

McCabe may well be best remembered for chronicling the unfolding horrors of the Heysel disaster in 1985, but he captured triumph more often than tragedy, and it would be a shame if those pictures cast a shadow over the rest of his work.