The Amateur Championship of the leading indoor game ought easily to be the most popular of all events of the kind during a winter sporting season. It is one of the least, and why? Because the method in which it has been run, right away up to the present, has been faulty from every point of view.
What I consider a wrong idea from the sporting point of view, is that the winner of the previous season should be exempted from playing anyone until a challenger had earned the right to play him in the absolute final. This ought to be abolished at once.
With a game in which fortune plays a considerable part on any particular day—as I know from experience it does at Billiards, for I have frequently played a man a thousand up on one day and been beaten by half the game, yet I have just reversed this result on the day following—it should be compulsory for any champion to have to fight his way right through the competition.
The custom of accepting some players as better than others, either in professional or amateur sport, and, exempting them from certain rounds, is only worthy of the worst type of modern sport. Why this arrangement should have entered into amateur billiards is a mystery which the Billiard Association would find it difficult to explain.
Then, too, the decentralisation of the premier competition has been a mistake. After playing off in the different divisions, London should invariably be the venue for the play of at least the last eight in the competition. What better place could there be than the veritable hub of the universe.
It may be advanced in opposition to this that better gates might be obtained at Huddersfield, Liverpool, or Dublin, or what-nots in the provinces. This is, of course, quite an absurdity from the point of view of a sport into which any person from the Colonies is liable to put an entrance.
Londoners are not at present interested in amateur billiards because they have only been catered for in a half-hearted way. There is much more excitement and entertainment to the average observer in watching a match lasting an afternoon and evening than in sitting out a session of a contest extending over a fortnight.
Just as the golf championship is limited to a couple of rounds of the course, so should the billiard championships, both amateur and professional, be short and quick and keen, with just that element of luck to give some spice to the engagement.
Games should be 1,000-up all through, and the final should never be extended. In nearly all our sports, certainly those which are the most popular, championships are run over the same course as the preliminary heats.
In conclusion, I should like to say that I hold no brief for any body, Billiard Association or Control Club.