Leading professionals, headed (it is understood) by W. Smith, are said to be talking about the formation of a professional governing body amongst themselves to run and control match-playing in this country.
On this point the lately-retired Chairman of The Billiards Association and Control Council (Mr. Sydenham Dixon) writing in The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, remarks that "there is no game or sport that professionals have been left to manage for themselves that they have not promptly ruined," and he gives several instances.
Then there is the question whether professionals have not already an Association of their own which might be made of greater deliberative value, and it occurred to The Billiard Player to invite the opinion on this phase of the subject of the Chairman of the Billiard Professionals' Association (Mr. W. J. Ayres), who has written as follows in reply:— "Personally I have always felt that there should be an association of professional players and markers, hence the formation of the present Association, which a few others and myself founded in 1904."
"I do not, however, think that such an association should make rules or take any part in the government of the game, but I feel that it would be wise if the Billiards Association and Control Council were to seek the assistance of the professional players and markers in the framing or alteration of the rules from time to time."
"The present Association (professionals) was formed (1) for the purpose of helping markers to excel in their profession (and it is from their ranks that many first-class players are drawn); (2) to obtain situations for markers, and (3) to assist them in illness, and to relieve the widows of deceased members."
"To your question as to whether any of the first-class professional players are members of our Association, I may say that Mr. Melbourne Inman is our President, and that Mr. W. Smith and Mr. C. Falkiner have both been elected members, and we have always invited the others to join us." The position would, consequently, seem to be that with a Billiards Association and Control Council on the one hand and a well-supported and representative Billiard Professionals' Association on the other, a consultative relationship between the two bodies might well be established.