Britons’ marbles not lost for national championships

Press, 4 March 1988, Page 20

Britons’ marbles not lost for national championships

The scene: a small hall somewhere in the South of England. A small group of nfen is gathered round a six-foot circle. Their talk! is of top-spin, backspin; side-spin, nose drops; targpts and tolleys. But j no, they have not lost itheir marbles —j they are (practising them.}

More than 20 teams are busy preparing for that great iannual event in the sporting calendar — the British marbles championship. ( The titanic struggle for the title will take place (on Friday, April 1, this year — April Fool’s Day. Or, morel in keeping with the tradition, Good Friday. Buj this is not a match merely meant as child’s Play., ' < It is a serious business, according to the British Marbles Board of Control secretary, Mr Sam McCarthy.

“It can give you a great sense of achievement, knocking a half-inch marble out of a six-foot circle," he said. “It takes a great deal of skill. It’s rather like ground-level snooker without a cue.” The Good Friday championships have been held at the same venue, the Greyhound Inn in ithe West Sussex hamlet | of Tinsley Green, } near Gatwick Airport, since they were launched! in 1932. i

But the game has been part of the sporting scene of the area for many years before. } i Good Friday was kriown in West Sussex ; as “Marbles Day” for centuries, Mr McCarthy: said. “I don’t know where it came from, but I know they used to play marbles all over the place, even through villages to the

doors of the church.” The game established itseelf such a reputation for misbehaviour I that at one time players risked being prosecuted. I A notice posted in the village of Warnham, near Horsham not far from Tinsley Green, warned that men who ! “molest young ladies or play marbles on Sunday” would be “prosecuted with the utmost vigour of the law.” i

The game, which is thought to (have started in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, was brought to Britain by the Romans. It calls for six-member teams to try to beat each other at knocking target marbles out of the centre of a six-foot sanded circle of concrete. The first team to knock out 25 of! the 49 targets placed in the centre of the circle — without step-

ping into:the ring itself — is the winner. The game was once played with clay targets and "tolleys” — the larger marbles used as the equivalent of cue balls. Mr McCarthy said: "We play with glass marbles now. We can’t get the clay targets or tolleys. “We used to play with the clay ones, but some swine stole Ithe Tinsley Green set in the 1960 s and we had to switch to glass.” While marbles may seem like a simple and peaceful rural pastime, it has had its moments as a battleground in the fight for women’s liberation.

There! was a storm in marble circles in the 1960 s and 11970 s when women were' barred from Playing.} They ; were allowed to play eventually — but were promptly barred again because their skirts and occasionally low-cut blouses i were said to be distracting the men on the opposing teams. Now,; however, all that is history. Mr I McCarthy said: “Once they stopped demanding to be allowed to play, it (was decided to let them play.

“It was all to do with some of the older marbles players, who said it wasn’t a women’s game. “But this year we’re expecting two women’s teams in the championship. Some women players are very good — we could not refuse :to let them Play.” I ! One of the teams at this year’s championship, as ever, will be the Tinsley Tigers, for ; whom it will virtually be a home match. J

Others will include the Black Dog Boozers, from an area of nearby Crawley, and even a team |of metropolitan | police officers rejoicing! in the unlikely name of the Bow Street Fudgers — winners of the world championships four years ago. I But the greatest! team in marbles history ! — the Toucan Terriblesi-— will not be there. For the team, which still holds the world record for clearing all 49 targets from the ring — in just 2min 57secs' — disbanded in 1977 after losing its British title |to another local team,' the Rams. , || | It was the end of lan era, for the Terribles had won the title 20 tiriies in a row, from! 1956. . | While the game I is widely thought to appeal just to children, lit is! in fact played all over the world, from China to Tyneside, Belgium to Baltimore. | The average I age of players in the! British championship is about 35, although there ! are a couple of 70-year-olds still entering the gladiatorial contest. And the game has even made its! mark on the English language — but not with | the expression you might think. No-one is sure of the origins of the expression “lose your marbles,” but “knuckle down and get on with it” comes direct from the marbles lexicography. Knuckling:' down is a reference to th}e ru e of the game which isays marbles have to} be fired into the ring by I a player whose index-finger knuckle is touching ; the ground. (Copyright! by DUO.) I |