THE shape of things competitive to come is on the billiard scene. Programmes are being mapped out. The conditions and venues of the 1936-37 season events will almost surely be known to you when another BILLIARD PLAYER is in your hands. The sketchy outline as we see it now, ^promises a fine picture. We shall, I believe, have a season that will be remembered. The Amateur Championships, we hope, will have further development of scope. There are vast possibilities about the new county scheme for the organisation of the championship ; last season's event proved that. The aim is to have a County Championship event in every county in England, and with a repeat performance on the part of those who helped so splendidly in the work last season, together with a fresh support in counties not then with us, we shall make this 1936-37 championship programme reach nearer to the ideal.
You know what the cynics say : "Hope is as a reed in the wind." But the cynic is not always right. Hope can sustain the courage of a man striding towards a goal. We're full of hope. We believe that there are many billiard men with affection for the game who will respond to a request for help to enlarge our scope of influence. We want to hear from them. We want contact with billiard people in places where kindred and affiliated associations do not exist. They can put us in touch with ambitious players who would like to have a tilt for a county title ; in touch with those who want only a little encouragement to emerge from the urban and rural billiard stages on to the wider stage of English Championship play. There are hundreds (yes, hundreds !) of league players capable of fine showing in the Amateur Championships. League secretaries will help us, help their players, and help, I am convinced, their leagues by taking an interest in the championships in the direction indicated.
Away in the North-East they have a Billiard Room Proprietors' Association. Within the organisation there are men who will do much for billiards as a game, apart from what they do to make their business more profitable. They promoted last season a free-entry snooker handicap. It had thousands of entries. The event is to be repeated this season. That is good work for our game. It makes a blade of competition grow where none grew before. It costs money and time, and if in the end it brings more grist to the mill of the room-owner, is not that his due ? Over all it brings the thrill of competitive play to some who have no other opportunity to obtain it.
At the recent annual meeting of the Association, the President emphasised the coming of fresh vitality into billiards as a result of the new B.A. & C.C. activity. His expression of appreciation of that activity was vigorously endorsed by his Association colleagues.
Billiard people are never backward when there is an opportunity of doing something to help worthy charitable causes. Recently, Manager and Secretary, T. W. Clark, of the Temperance Billiard Halls conceived the idea of helping the Royal Eye Hospital by the apportionment of the proceeds of games played on a large number of tables in their South-County halls. The results were distinctly gratifying, and Mr. T. W. Clark has had the honour of a governorship of the hospital conferred upon him. Mention of these matters is made because the efforts are helpful to billiards and helpful to me in my job of making billiards more and more useful in the social scheme.
League secretaries are reminded of the Certification of Referees Scheme. Next month it is hoped there will be a drive for interest in the scheme by our district associations, and examinations will be held all over England. Those desirous of sitting for certificates should write to us, or to the secretary of the Billiards Association in their own districts. Our address is : Billiards Association & Control Council, 514, Cecil Chambers (West), Strand, London, W.C. 2.