Lager-drinking snooker star
Sports comments By Tony Matthews
Twenty eight years ago, in June 1992, Bill Werbeniuk retired from professional snooker at the age of 45.
Born on January 14, 1947 in Winnipeg, his paternal grandfather had immigrated to Canada from Ukraine while it is said that his father was regarded as one of the most notorious criminals in Canada, having been arrested for armed robbery, drug dealing and scores of larcenies.
His father also owned Pop's Billiards hall on Logan Avenue in Winnipeg, where Bill began playing snooker as a child. Indeed, he spent a huge portion of his youth travelling around playing pool for money with fellow countryman Cliff Thorburn.
Bill’s professional snooker record included an 9-8 quarterfinal loss to John Pulman in the 1975 Canadian Open and four quarter-final defeats in the 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1983 World Championships to Ray Reardon, John Virgo, Reardon again and Alex Higgins, in that order. He also reached the 1984 semifinals of the UK Championships (the year when non-UK based players were first allowed to enter) only to lose 9-3 to the reigning world champion Terry Griffiths.
Also in 1983, Bill reached two major finals - the Lada Classic when he was beaten 9-5 by Steve Davis and the Winfield Masters in Australia when he lost 7-3 to compatriot Cliff Thorburn.
Unfortunately Bill was also notorious, worldwide, for the copious amounts of alcohol he consumed before and during matches – downing at least six pints before starting and then drinking one pint for each frame he played after that. Overall he used to down between 45 and 50 pints of lager a day. That’s hard to believe but it’s absolutely true.
In fact, doctors advised Bill to drink alcohol to counteract a familial benign essential tremor. Later in his career he also took propranolol, a beta blocker, to cope with the effects of his alcohol consumption on his heart.
Bill was also famously reported in the UK tabloid press as successfully claiming the cost of six pints of lager before every match as a tax deductible expense.
Two of Bill’s most famous feats of drinking came when he sank 76 cans of lager during a game with John Spencer in Australia in the 1970s, and in 1971 he swallowed 43 pints of lager in a snooker match/ drinking contest against Scotsman Eddie Sinclair who actually passed out following his 42nd pint!
Bill was also reported as saying that during one 11-frame match which he lost against Nigel Bond in 1990, he downed 28 pints of lager and 16 whiskies and then said to his opponent, referee and radio interviewer: "I'm off to the bar now for a proper drink"… where he quickly consumed an entire bottle of Scotch to ‘drown his sorrows’.
Bill died of heart failure on January 20, 2003, six days after his 56th birthday.
NB. Sadly, another former snooker player, Willie Thorne, aged 66, passed away here in Spain earlier this month.