Battle to be king of the baize in chess of cue sports

SKIVING off school in Glasgow’s west end often meant a surreptitious trip to the George snooker hall in Great George Street, a ramshackle green wooden building with a corrugated iron roof which rattled like machine gun fire in heavy rain.

The trick was to wipe your hands before returning, as claiming a dentist’s appointment would be undermined if a suspicious teacher spotted tell-tale blue chalk on fingers or blazer sleeve.

Most of us were rubbish at the game as a full-size snooker table is unforgiving. Besides, you were anxious not to bump into one of the older, leaner, characters who seemed to live in the George, and who casually flashed wads of banknotes when they challenged a player to a side bet.

The George is gone now, swept away on a tide of progress, if the Marks and Spencer food hall now in its place can be claimed as progress. There was another thing I remembered about the George – the small number of players who eschewed the gaudiness of snooker, with its shoal of brightly coloured balls, and instead played billiards with only three balls – one red, and two cue balls, one with a dot on it.

I thought billiards had been swept away like the old George, but this week at the Ball Room in Glasgow’s Battlefield, a snooker hall of today’s standards with tables which don’t slope alarmingly and where the baize looks as comforting as a baby’s swaddling blanket rather than worn through to the slate below, the World Team Billiards Championships are being held.

Jim Burke, one of the organisers, has seen the popularity of billiards ebb, but like a survivalist gently blowing on a tiny flame in a campfire, he is determined that billiards should still shine brightly. “To me,” says Jim, “billiards is like chess, while snooker’s like draughts. You need far more cognitive skills for billiards.”

As he sees it, snooker has a set formula of potting a red, going for the black, back to the red and so on, with little thought for your next shot. Billiards though has infinite possibilities as you calculate whether to pot a ball, cannon off both balls, or even potting your own cue ball after hitting another – a shot I was all too good at in snooker, even though it was a foul.

Appearing at the championships is Scotland’s best ever billiards player, Dave Sneddon, now 78, and looking far more sprightly than a man of his age should – so much for misspent youth. Although he never smoked, he does remember the old halls where cigarette smoke would linger under the bright overheard table light, obscuring the far end in fog. “The skill in billiards is not apparent unless you play the game. It really tests your head,” he says.

The most enthusiastic country for billiards is India where the game was brought over in the time of the British Raj by English officers and gentlemen. Let’s not forget that billiards was even mentioned by Shakespeare although he was pushing it a bit by having Cleopatra say “Let’s to billiards” as no wall paintings of ancient Egyptians taking out a cue have been discovered. Another royal connection is Mary Queen of Scots who was wrapped in her billiards’ tablecloth after her swift death.

But the British Raj? I ask Manoj Kothari, Indian coach at the World Championships, why they would cling on to something from the colonial past. He’s pretty relaxed about it. “The Raj also gave us railways which have made a great difference to India – and the English language. One hundred per cent of Indian graduates speak English which will help our economy more than China.”

As for billiards, Manoj says: “We have a tradition of billiards which in the fifties made the top players household names. The skills and the knowhow have been passed on, with the mantle taken over by younger players.” He concedes billiards has taken a back seat to snooker, and explains: “When colour television was brought in, the household ladies were captured by it...the colours... the men in waistcoats. So I’ve been told for nearly 30 years now that billiards is

Unless dancing girls were high-kicking across the table at the same time, it’s still not riveting viewing

a dying game, but it is still here.”

But the thing is, and most folk at the championships at the Ball Room would agree, billiards is not really a spectator sport, as players try to dig in for breaks of up to 500 points which can take an hour. They have changed the cue ball colours to a white ball with red dots and a yellow ball with red dots, but unless a row of dancing girls were high-kicking across the table at the same time, it is still not riveting viewing.

But I meet at the Ball Room an old west end drinking companion, Stephen O’Neill, who runs a property company and who is sponsoring the championships.

He is not getting much out of it commercially – no media coverage, and the Indian players will be returning home rather than renting flats in Glasgow. But it’s not why he is involved.

Stephen recalls the old George. “I used to lose money in games there. Fortunately I now rent out flats in the property that’s replaced it, so slowly I’m getting my money back.” But you sense for Stephen it’s more about helping to keep old traditions alive in the city, supporting something before it is swept away in a homogenised world.

So I’ll challenge Stephen to a game in memory of the George. I think I’ve got some blue chalk hidden away in a pencil case somewhere.