I HAVE been much interested in the various suggestions to bring billiards and snooker more into the limelight, or, in other words, helping it into the position that it should undoubtedly hold with our sport-loving public.
Having been a billiard marker, then Yorkshire professional champion, I am now owner of a string of billiard halls and working as a billiard-table maker, in addition to which I have been writing on the game for the "Yorkshire Post" and Allied Newspapers for over 30 years, I may claim to know something about all sides of the question.
Now that the B.A. and C.C. have "come into their own" there is some hope for the game.
For years it has been the fashion amongst the professionals, the trade, and writers on the game, to belittle the ruling body, but one cannot get away from the fact that only vigorous action on the part of the B.A. and C.C. will rescue the game from the slough of despond it has fallen into.
The suggestion of a Trades Committee being allied to the B.A. and C.C. is, I think, one of the best moves that has ever yet been made. I do not know what has been done in this matter as, living in Leeds, I am not in very close touch with headquarters, but such a move would have my wholehearted co-operation.
One hardly need recapitulate how poorly the Press treats billiards in comparison to other games. Well, there is an old saying that you cannot make bricks without straw, and such small amount of "straw" with which both the professionals and the ruling body have in late years provided the Press, has been of very poor quality.
Exhibition billiards by the professionals used to be very popular, but public taste for this has more or less gone. A sad lack of rising young players has not helped things, and the daily dish provided by four players has reduced the taste to the point of satiety.
What then is the remedy?
A more vigorous attitude by the ruling body towards the championship would help.
Then I suggest that each season it is possible to run a genuine £1,000 Tournament on handicap terms between the leading six or eight players, to be played under the new system of a week of short games.
This makes for a better handicap, and would give the "outsiders" more chance.
Where is that £1,000 coming from you may ask. Well, after the handicap and draw, each week's match should be put up for auction to anyone in the trade who wishes to run one. There would, of coarse, be an entry fee to keep the players up to the scratch.
If such a competition were run by the B.A. and C.C. on national lines, I venture to prophesy that the £1,000 tournament would be a success.
It should receive the support of everyone connected with the trade; for the reason that an event of this kind would have the full attention of the Press and in this way it would tend to create greater interest in the game and eventually benefit everyone concerned.
But the tournament would have to be run on the strictest possible lines by the ruling body.