BILLIARDS IN ENGLAND.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1159, 27 June 1912, Page 3

BILLIARDS IN ENGLAND.

Mr H. R. Hamer, a crack Victorian cueist, and a member of the committee of the Amateur Billiard Association, recently went to England for a trip, and in a letter to the president of the A.B.A. of Victoria, had some interesting remarks to make concerning the game in the Old Country. The following are a few of his remarks: —‘‘I called on Mr Sydenham Dixon, President of the British Billiard Association, soon after I got to London early, and had a chat with him. I send you a report of the trial of an action in which Mr Dixon and his committee were very keenly interested, and in which Mr Lonsdale tried to raise the point of which we have heard in Melbourne —viz., that it was not right to alter the terms of a competition after it had been running some time. (Mr Lonsdale had been deprived of his amateur status by the Billiard Association for giving an exhibition with Stevenson, the champion, without having obtained the permission of the Billiard Association). As it happens, Alverstone, L.C.J., ruled that contention out pretty promptly, and in the event, as you will see, Lonsdale lost the action, which ought never to have been brought. The Billiard Association has since reinstated all the men who were suspended for playing without permits. It is interesting to note that the Association, apparently rightly, claims. the power to suspend amateurs, whether members of the. Association or not. I went to see one of the games in the London qualifying rounds, and it was just as bad as the worst of ours, and most of the games were much the same, judging from the reports. Breaks of 50 extremely rare, and the play dismally slow. These remarks, however, don’t apply to the game for the championship of England, which I see has just been played at Bradford, and has been won by Virr; on the second day he averaged, 1 think, 29 and. 35,. and made several breaks well over 100. The champions of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland are to play off for the championship of Great Britain in Edinburgh. The championship is open to anyone, whether a member of the Billiard Association or not. The holder has to stand ’out of the pieliminary rounds, but there has been great discussion and much adverse criticism about a similar condition in tennis. I find that the method adopted here is the ordinary , knock-out tournament, and that Mr Dixon avowedly arranges the heats so as to give the best men every opportunity of not meeting until the final, and that in the final play-off tor the championship he does exactly the same thing. You will remember We did this one year, and that it was dropped afterwards. The Association has also lately finished what Mr Dixon regards as a very successful amateur handicap. He claims to have sufficient knowledge of all the entries to be able to frame the handicap himself. You, of course, know Mr Dixon better than I do, but it strikes me that it would not be wise to do a thing just because he adopts that method. For instance, he told me that he would rather play with the worst set of ivory balls than with the best set of composition, which may be loyalty, but certainly is not sense. As to rules, both Mr Dixon and Mr Thorn, the Secretary, admitted that the change in the rule as to the balls touching was made to avoid difficulty as to the anchor cannons, in which a man could, of course, make the cannon off the ball that his own ball was not touching; but now that the rule had been altered to prevent more than 25 ball-to-ball cannons, there was no reason for not going back to the rule as first altered —that is to say, making the man play on from the position in which he is left, and not spotting the ball, as required by the present rule. The committee appears to have had a good deal of discussion as to whether or not hotelkeepers owning billiard tables were eligible as amateurs, and have come to the conclusion, with a good deal of hesitation, to allow them to play. I could not get Mr Dixon to admit that the Billiards Control Cliib rule as to fouls

wag an improvement on his complicated set of penalties; but the B.C.C. rules seem to be those universally played under by professionals, and I think they are much better on this point. They certainly in operation keep the game much more open. 1 have seen practically all the professionals playing, and the man who seems to have the best future is a youngster named Tom Newman, who, if he keeps steady, has a good chance of being the champion in a very short time.”