Clarke McConachy
A Life dedicated to Billiards
Clarke McConachy was born at Glenorchy, Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand, in 1895. It seems that he became fascinated with the game after watching George Gray. He took to practising the in-off game some six hours a day in his father's billiard hall and made a red-ball break of 1983 soon after his seventeenth birthday. (Paul stales this figure. 1983 is also the figure given by Everton. "Snooker Scene," May.1980.P5. Riso Levi gives this break as 1083 - "Twentieth Century." P83.Ecl.) The start of his career was when he beat one Bill Stevenson for the New Zealand Professional Championship in 1914 - a Title he held for the rest of his life. He first visited England in 1922 but, playing with ivories, was well beaten by Reece.
He gradually developed his top-of-the-table game, at first the Postman's Knock and later the Floating White. Levi writes how in the 1929/30 season his play was a revelation and describes how the New Zealander kept the object white well away from the top cushion moving it barely inches as he alternated pots with cannons. (Sounds like Russell.Ed.) Later he became a master of the nursery cannon though he was never able to play them at the speed of Lindrum or Davis. In 1932 he made a record run of 466 cannons turning the balls and taking them some nine times along the top cushion.
He was the first player ever to score over a thousand in two consecutive visits to the table. Levi writes that the second of these two breaks was one of, "The cleverest and most attractive great breaks I ever witnessed. It did not contain even one short run of rail cannons." (Billiards in the Twentieth Century, P83)
He beat all the members of, "The Big Four," at one time or another and had the distinction of beating Walter Lindrum off scratch more times than any other player.
In 1932 he averaged 98 against Joe Davis but still lost this title match by 5902, but he came within 1108 of beating Lindrum in the 1934 Semi-final.
1951 and 1952 were good years for Clarke. In 1951 he at last won the World Title beating John Barrie 6681 - 5057 averaging 60.0 to Barrie's 44.8 and making breaks of 481, 438, 425, 397 and 376. Though he was by then well past his best this was a pretty good performance from a 56 year old with incipient Parkinson's Disease. In that same year he made a maximum at snooker and in '52 played Horace Lindrum for the official version of the World Snooker Championship losing 49 - 94.
But he was still not finished as a player. In 1968 he accepted a challenge from Rex Williams losing by a mere 265 points. At the age of 78 he competed yet again, this time in a World Billiards Open held in New Zealand. He used a 30oz cue to help him control the shake in his cue arm and defeated both Michael Ferreira and Mohammed Lafir. He was still practising and helping others until days before his death. McConachy's fitness was legendary in the billiards world and the story of him picking up a chair one-handed - with Lindrum sitting in it - has been told many times. He thought nothing of walking round the table on his hands. Levi writes of how strong the New Zealander was and considered him to be the hardest hitter of a ball in the world. He prided himself on his physical fitness, how ironical that he should spend the latter part of his life suffering from Parkinson's.
In 1989, thanks to Mark Wildman, I was able to watch some snooker in Derby. Mark introduced me to the players including New Zealander Dene O'Kane. Dene told me of how McConachy had helped him with his game and had insisted on doing his own fielding out - and this shortly before his death.
Clarke McConachy was not one of the most talented players who ever lived but he reached the very heights of the billiards world and became one of the greatest players ever by dint of sheer hard work and dedication to the game he loved. Clarke was awarded the MBE in 1964 and died in Auckland a few days before his eighty-fifth birthday. A remarkable man and a remarkable player.