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Sports correspondent & historian with |
Last week, the Sideline Sid piece was about the three greatest sporting stars to visit New Zealand in my lifetime.
This week’s column is about meeting three world champion billiards and snooker players who literally came to my doorstep.
Television shows such as Pot Black brought the game into our living rooms in the 1970s, with some of the world’s stars touring New Zealand on exhibition tours.
The first I met, while working at the Mount Maunganui RSA in the 1970s, was Clark McConachy. In 1915, at 20, he won the New Zealand professional billiards championship – a title he remarkably held until his passing in 1980.
After first appearing in the world billiards championship in 1922, he finally won the title in 1951, holding the crown until losing it in 1968.
McConachy was also a dab hand at snooker, finishing runner-up in the world championships in 1932 and 1952.
He attributed his continued success to dedication to practice and his remarkable physical fitness.
A non-smoker and teetotaller, he regularly ran four miles (6.5km) while on tour. He also trained on a punching bag and was renowned for walking around the table on his hands before a match.
The second cue-sport great to showcase his skills on the baize at the Mount RSA during my time there was the complete opposite of the thoroughly gentlemanly McConachy.
Alex Higgins was a two-time world snooker champion, nicknamed ‘Hurricane’ Higgins for his rapid play. While known as the ‘people’s champion’, he had a volatile nature and was once sidelined from the sport for headbutting an official.
Higgins made history by becoming the first qualifier to win the world snooker championship in 1972.
It was in mid-1975 that Higgins stopped off at the Mount RSA during his exhibition tour of New Zealand.
We saw first-hand his volatile nature.
After the obligatory trick shots, there were one-frame games with some of our club’s best players.
One of my mates put together a break in the 80s, which was a magnificent achievement for a young player.
Higgins’ response was to clear the remaining balls from the table and say to his opponent, “Who’s giving this b***** exhibition – you or me?”
Hurricane Higgins would go on to win his second world crown in 1982. He lived a turbulent lifestyle and died in 2010, aged just 61, in virtual obscurity.
My third encounter with a cue-sport world champion came during my time managing the Wairoa Club in Northern Hawke’s Bay.
New Zealander Dene O’Kane had a great-uncle in the town, and we were lucky enough to host two exclusive O’Kane exhibitions in the mid-1980s.
On his second visit, to accommodate a large crowd, we took apart a snooker table in the snooker room and reassembled it in the middle of the club’s dance floor – quite some task.
O’Kane became New Zealand snooker champion at 17 years of age and turned professional in 1987.
He broke into the world top 20 and reached the world championship quarter-finals in 1987 and 1992.
Later in his career, he captured the World Masters Snooker title on three occasions.
However, the best parts of his visits to the Wairoa Club came after closing, when a few of us would sit around enjoying a few ales while Dene shared stories about rubbing shoulders with the greats of the snooker world.
Today, eight-ball has largely usurped snooker as the cue-sport game of choice, and billiards is like the dodo – dead and buried.