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A Virgin in Yarraville
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The story of one man's first time at the Australian National Billiards Championship
Early in April I was asked if I wanted to participate in the Australian Billiard Championships in Melbourne to which I laughed and said they don’t let hackers like me play in such prestigious tournaments. After a lot of arguing and quite a few beers I was convinced to put in my entry having been reminded of the immortal words of my good friend and practice partner Peter Tankard, “you’re a long time dead”. I was going to play in my first Australian Championships.
Following a 2am start, Michael Pearson, George Chammas and I drove down on the Friday morning and arrived at Yarraville in the early afternoon in time for a practice session. The boys told me in the car that I would need to adapt to the very fast cloths and different throws between balls but until I hit the first few shots, I didn’t realize what they meant.
My first shot was a standard loser from hand into the middle pocket with the intention of getting the object ball back to its starting point. I played a very slow shot expecting the tables to be quick but… the object ball kept rolling. “should stop now” … ball still rolling ...”should stop now” … ball past the middle pocket ...” STOP!!” … ball still rolling and into baulk to finally stop just before the bottom rail. The ball seemed to travel downhill against the nap. Had the table fitters made a mistake and put the cloth on the wrong way round? I gently brushed the table with my hand to find they hadn’t. Bloody hell, this was going to take some getting used to. The next 2 hours was spent mainly considering which upstairs window in the club to throw myself out of as the more I practiced the worse I got. I thought if I do “fall out of a window” I might meet Walter Lindrum in the afterlife and my visit to Yarraville would not have been in vain.
Finally the “session from hell” finished and we went to our rented house just two blocks down the road and met my two fellow competitors and house mates, Matthew Bolton and a young man just turned 18 from Tassie, Joshua Burns. Matthew is ranked number one in Australia and therefore as our current best billiard player and current Australia billiards champion, I didn’t know whether to bow and avoid eye contact or just call him “Sir” and wait to be spoken to. To my surprise and delight he greeted me like a long lost friend and within a few minutes I felt I had been a mate of his for a long time. Joshua, on the other hand, was quiet. As an up-and-coming young billiard and snooker player I tried to make him feel comfortable and relaxed telling him we had heard great things about his ability and if he didn’t win his group we would all consider him a failure and he would be a great disappointment to his parents. Funny, but for the rest of the day we didn’t talk much although after a few beers and a feed that night we became great friends for the remaining time we were there.
Two years ago I played in the New Zealand Open and whilst analysing each group with my fellow Aussie players, we decided that there was a bunny in each one. The bunny of course was an easy beat and to be discarded as a serious contender to qualify first or second in their respective groups. Each of my compatriots found the bunny in their group but when they came to mine they all shook their heads saying I had a very tough draw and would have to play well to get through to the knockout stage. How come all the other groups had bunnies and mine didn’t? It just wasn’t fair. Having pondered my misfortune for some time it finally dawned on me and I couldn’t stop laughing. Of course there was a bunny in my group, it was me!
The morning of the first round we did as we had in New Zealand, studied our respective groups and decided who were serious contenders to go through to the next round. I found that the bunny in my NZ group had followed me here to Melbourne and was once again the bunny in my group. With four players in each group, the top two go on to the next knockout rounds. I played my first round in the evening session and ended up at the end of the day as top of my group having had a reasonable win, due mainly to a lot of luck on my part and my opposition struggling with the table, just as I had the day before. My hopes of a miraculous path to the Grand Final against Matthew (obviously he would be my opposition) rose to a great height and I was in high spirits. Having met various other players during the day, dinner late in the evening was at the bar, a happy affair discussing various billiard and tournament related subjects with new friends and, after most had gone home, with some reluctant bar staff.
Next day the world fell apart on my first Australian championship dreams. I played Rod Nelson and Simon Scerri, both Victorians and very used to the wonderful conditions of fast tables and the strange throw of the balls. With no mercy, they accumulated points like a pin cushion at a dress alteration shop and double baulked me “just in case” on every occasion possible. Had I got them worried? By the afternoon my quest to be Aussie Billiard Champion 2016 had come to an end and all I had left for the next two days was to follow the plight of my fellow NSW friends and have some fun. I spent the next few hours walking to and from the venue and our accommodation, either to see a particular match or have something to eat or drink with various players and referees. Despite my losses I was having a great time.
The next day, two of the highlights of the trip happened. The first was when I was having a drink with George and he saw someone across the room and said “I think you should meet this guy”. He called over to a man who was pushing his way through the crowded bar who obediently came over and I was introduced to Mac (Ed: Mac Rynkiewicz), one of the writers of the book Cushion Crawlers. I had heard of him and his mate Eric (Ed: Eric Worsley), legends of the art of nursery cannons so to meet him was a great thrill. “Could you show me a few things, like getting past the middle pocket, what to do when the ball gets underneath the outside ball, how to reverse the cueing direction”? His eyes glazed over and I thought I detected a small tremor in his knee and a bit of dribble from the corner of his mouth. ”I’ll get Eric and my cue and see you in the room in 5” he said. Well, when he entered the room with his cue I didn’t believe my eyes. Some 12 inches up from the tip was a lump of metal tube wrapped around the shaft acting as some kind of counterweight. Someone had told me of this but, having seen it with my own eyes made me grin as I recounted them also telling me his cue was worth more as scrap metal than as a sporting implement.
The next 30 minutes were to be the most informative, amazing and unbelievable time in my quest to understand and play nursery cannons. As one of them tapped the balls along the cushion, the other pointed out pitfalls and the best way to play the next shot. I realised they were masters of the theory and eager to show me what they could in the short time available. “This is how you turn the corner, this is how you get past the middle pocket”. The instruction went on and on and my questions were largely ignored as they became more and more immersed and delved deeper and deeper into the forbidden dark art of nurseries. At the end of the session my head was spinning with echoes of “a bit of right and top here, get the double kiss if you are too low, no side on this shot, just bottom to gather them near the corner pocket, not too hard”. Soon after George showed me a picture of Macs table which was covered in lines and curves all drawn in chalk with various angles, symbols, numbers and letters. A true fanatic.
The other highlight was a visit to Walter Lindrum’s house in Albert Park, or more specifically to his billiard room. Jason Colebrook and Graeme McNeil had managed to organise the trip and six of us, mainly from NSW, were invited to see the sacred room. The billiard room is actually an addition to the house, located at the back and basically separate from the main building. We were ushered to the back room door and once inside, saw that the entire area around the walls were filled with sideboards and tables covered in memorabilia. Most of the items were photos of Walter with family or famous dignitaries, certificates of world records (some 12 or 14) and even a letter of appreciation from Buckingham Palace for a demonstration of billiards to royalty.
There, in the centre of the room was his beautiful table covered in a striped dust cloth under a two sectioned light shade. The strange thing about the light shade was that there was only one small light globe in each section, yet the light seemed more than adequate. We were given permission to remove the dust cloth and I was invited to take the practice balls (Walters?) and have a few shots. I set the balls up for nurseries and found the balls to be a lot heavier than the current modern balls and needed a bit more power to get them going. We took it in turns to get a few photos, some of us playing shots at the table and a few of us standing next to a life size cut-out of Walter. I was surprised to see he was not a tall man but what he lacked in height, he certainly made up for in ability. It was all over too quickly but a visit I will never forget.
The finals stages saw some great billiards with both our NSW top players, Joe and Michael, playing each other in the quarter finals and at the end of time the scores were level. A 15 minute decider saw excitement a-plenty as Michael made a quick 40 odd and Joe responded with a 56. With only 30 seconds to go Michael only needed 8 to win but the clock just beat him to let Joe scrape through. In the final Matthew beat fellow Western Australian Frank Humphreys by a convincing margin, although Frank had played some lovely billiards to get through the rounds.
During the competition I met many players I had never met before, all of them true gentlemen and all having a passion for the three ball game. One of the nice things about billiard players is they are very happy to offer advice and show you how to play various shots when you ask them and in some cases even if you haven’t! The other unsung heroes of the competition were the officials and referees. Having had a meal and a drink with many of them I realised they are all dedicated and proud to provide a well-run competition with quality and fair adjudication of every match.
Finally it was time to return home. George and I were not playing in the 150-up competition which followed, so that morning we left early for the long car trip home before the rush hour traffic in Melbourne became too bad. Some hours into our journey I had a call from one of the referees that George had stayed with enquiring if George had his cue with him. “Did you put it in the car?” he asked me when I told him the reason for the call. “No” I said, “did you?” Apparently two of the referees were heading for the venue when they found George’s cue propped up against a brick wall next to the front door of their apartment! As one of the refs was from the central coast in NSW he confirmed he would get it to me the following week and I would in turn get it back to George.
On the journey home we discussed many subjects about our week at Yarraville, both agreeing it had been a great competition, excellent venue and all the players and officials had been great people to be around. We also analysed our individual performances, George being very hard on himself and felt very disappointed that he had not played to his full potential even though he had topped his group in the round robin stages. I, on the other hand, had played like a beginner with the tables completely beating me, but there had been so many other memorable moments that I didn’t care, I had had a ball and enjoyed every moment of it.
Just for the record, I picked up George’s cue the following week as planned, and as we were playing in an inter-club competition a few days later, I texted George to tell him I would bring his cue along. Immediately there was a text back “Keep it, I’m never playing the stupid game again”. His disappointment in his performance at the competition obviously hit harder than I imagined. Not knowing what to do or say I didn’t reply but the next day came the text I had been expecting. “Back out of retirement so please bring my cue tomorrow”. It just shows you that the game can get under your skin and once a billiard player, always a billiard player.
My time in my first Australian championships had been more than memorable. Disappointed in my own results but with the joy that watching top players bring, not to mention the many new friends I made, I just can’t wait till next year.
Hope to see you at the next Australian Billiard Championships, where there will be one less virgin.
Andy de Haan
Member of the New South Wales Hornsby RSL Snooker and Billiard Club
Following a 2am start, Michael Pearson, George Chammas and I drove down on the Friday morning and arrived at Yarraville in the early afternoon in time for a practice session. The boys told me in the car that I would need to adapt to the very fast cloths and different throws between balls but until I hit the first few shots, I didn’t realize what they meant.
My first shot was a standard loser from hand into the middle pocket with the intention of getting the object ball back to its starting point. I played a very slow shot expecting the tables to be quick but… the object ball kept rolling. “should stop now” … ball still rolling ...”should stop now” … ball past the middle pocket ...” STOP!!” … ball still rolling and into baulk to finally stop just before the bottom rail. The ball seemed to travel downhill against the nap. Had the table fitters made a mistake and put the cloth on the wrong way round? I gently brushed the table with my hand to find they hadn’t. Bloody hell, this was going to take some getting used to. The next 2 hours was spent mainly considering which upstairs window in the club to throw myself out of as the more I practiced the worse I got. I thought if I do “fall out of a window” I might meet Walter Lindrum in the afterlife and my visit to Yarraville would not have been in vain.
Finally the “session from hell” finished and we went to our rented house just two blocks down the road and met my two fellow competitors and house mates, Matthew Bolton and a young man just turned 18 from Tassie, Joshua Burns. Matthew is ranked number one in Australia and therefore as our current best billiard player and current Australia billiards champion, I didn’t know whether to bow and avoid eye contact or just call him “Sir” and wait to be spoken to. To my surprise and delight he greeted me like a long lost friend and within a few minutes I felt I had been a mate of his for a long time. Joshua, on the other hand, was quiet. As an up-and-coming young billiard and snooker player I tried to make him feel comfortable and relaxed telling him we had heard great things about his ability and if he didn’t win his group we would all consider him a failure and he would be a great disappointment to his parents. Funny, but for the rest of the day we didn’t talk much although after a few beers and a feed that night we became great friends for the remaining time we were there.
Two years ago I played in the New Zealand Open and whilst analysing each group with my fellow Aussie players, we decided that there was a bunny in each one. The bunny of course was an easy beat and to be discarded as a serious contender to qualify first or second in their respective groups. Each of my compatriots found the bunny in their group but when they came to mine they all shook their heads saying I had a very tough draw and would have to play well to get through to the knockout stage. How come all the other groups had bunnies and mine didn’t? It just wasn’t fair. Having pondered my misfortune for some time it finally dawned on me and I couldn’t stop laughing. Of course there was a bunny in my group, it was me!
The morning of the first round we did as we had in New Zealand, studied our respective groups and decided who were serious contenders to go through to the next round. I found that the bunny in my NZ group had followed me here to Melbourne and was once again the bunny in my group. With four players in each group, the top two go on to the next knockout rounds. I played my first round in the evening session and ended up at the end of the day as top of my group having had a reasonable win, due mainly to a lot of luck on my part and my opposition struggling with the table, just as I had the day before. My hopes of a miraculous path to the Grand Final against Matthew (obviously he would be my opposition) rose to a great height and I was in high spirits. Having met various other players during the day, dinner late in the evening was at the bar, a happy affair discussing various billiard and tournament related subjects with new friends and, after most had gone home, with some reluctant bar staff.
Next day the world fell apart on my first Australian championship dreams. I played Rod Nelson and Simon Scerri, both Victorians and very used to the wonderful conditions of fast tables and the strange throw of the balls. With no mercy, they accumulated points like a pin cushion at a dress alteration shop and double baulked me “just in case” on every occasion possible. Had I got them worried? By the afternoon my quest to be Aussie Billiard Champion 2016 had come to an end and all I had left for the next two days was to follow the plight of my fellow NSW friends and have some fun. I spent the next few hours walking to and from the venue and our accommodation, either to see a particular match or have something to eat or drink with various players and referees. Despite my losses I was having a great time.
The next day, two of the highlights of the trip happened. The first was when I was having a drink with George and he saw someone across the room and said “I think you should meet this guy”. He called over to a man who was pushing his way through the crowded bar who obediently came over and I was introduced to Mac (Ed: Mac Rynkiewicz), one of the writers of the book Cushion Crawlers. I had heard of him and his mate Eric (Ed: Eric Worsley), legends of the art of nursery cannons so to meet him was a great thrill. “Could you show me a few things, like getting past the middle pocket, what to do when the ball gets underneath the outside ball, how to reverse the cueing direction”? His eyes glazed over and I thought I detected a small tremor in his knee and a bit of dribble from the corner of his mouth. ”I’ll get Eric and my cue and see you in the room in 5” he said. Well, when he entered the room with his cue I didn’t believe my eyes. Some 12 inches up from the tip was a lump of metal tube wrapped around the shaft acting as some kind of counterweight. Someone had told me of this but, having seen it with my own eyes made me grin as I recounted them also telling me his cue was worth more as scrap metal than as a sporting implement.
The next 30 minutes were to be the most informative, amazing and unbelievable time in my quest to understand and play nursery cannons. As one of them tapped the balls along the cushion, the other pointed out pitfalls and the best way to play the next shot. I realised they were masters of the theory and eager to show me what they could in the short time available. “This is how you turn the corner, this is how you get past the middle pocket”. The instruction went on and on and my questions were largely ignored as they became more and more immersed and delved deeper and deeper into the forbidden dark art of nurseries. At the end of the session my head was spinning with echoes of “a bit of right and top here, get the double kiss if you are too low, no side on this shot, just bottom to gather them near the corner pocket, not too hard”. Soon after George showed me a picture of Macs table which was covered in lines and curves all drawn in chalk with various angles, symbols, numbers and letters. A true fanatic.
The other highlight was a visit to Walter Lindrum’s house in Albert Park, or more specifically to his billiard room. Jason Colebrook and Graeme McNeil had managed to organise the trip and six of us, mainly from NSW, were invited to see the sacred room. The billiard room is actually an addition to the house, located at the back and basically separate from the main building. We were ushered to the back room door and once inside, saw that the entire area around the walls were filled with sideboards and tables covered in memorabilia. Most of the items were photos of Walter with family or famous dignitaries, certificates of world records (some 12 or 14) and even a letter of appreciation from Buckingham Palace for a demonstration of billiards to royalty.
There, in the centre of the room was his beautiful table covered in a striped dust cloth under a two sectioned light shade. The strange thing about the light shade was that there was only one small light globe in each section, yet the light seemed more than adequate. We were given permission to remove the dust cloth and I was invited to take the practice balls (Walters?) and have a few shots. I set the balls up for nurseries and found the balls to be a lot heavier than the current modern balls and needed a bit more power to get them going. We took it in turns to get a few photos, some of us playing shots at the table and a few of us standing next to a life size cut-out of Walter. I was surprised to see he was not a tall man but what he lacked in height, he certainly made up for in ability. It was all over too quickly but a visit I will never forget.
The finals stages saw some great billiards with both our NSW top players, Joe and Michael, playing each other in the quarter finals and at the end of time the scores were level. A 15 minute decider saw excitement a-plenty as Michael made a quick 40 odd and Joe responded with a 56. With only 30 seconds to go Michael only needed 8 to win but the clock just beat him to let Joe scrape through. In the final Matthew beat fellow Western Australian Frank Humphreys by a convincing margin, although Frank had played some lovely billiards to get through the rounds.
During the competition I met many players I had never met before, all of them true gentlemen and all having a passion for the three ball game. One of the nice things about billiard players is they are very happy to offer advice and show you how to play various shots when you ask them and in some cases even if you haven’t! The other unsung heroes of the competition were the officials and referees. Having had a meal and a drink with many of them I realised they are all dedicated and proud to provide a well-run competition with quality and fair adjudication of every match.
Finally it was time to return home. George and I were not playing in the 150-up competition which followed, so that morning we left early for the long car trip home before the rush hour traffic in Melbourne became too bad. Some hours into our journey I had a call from one of the referees that George had stayed with enquiring if George had his cue with him. “Did you put it in the car?” he asked me when I told him the reason for the call. “No” I said, “did you?” Apparently two of the referees were heading for the venue when they found George’s cue propped up against a brick wall next to the front door of their apartment! As one of the refs was from the central coast in NSW he confirmed he would get it to me the following week and I would in turn get it back to George.
On the journey home we discussed many subjects about our week at Yarraville, both agreeing it had been a great competition, excellent venue and all the players and officials had been great people to be around. We also analysed our individual performances, George being very hard on himself and felt very disappointed that he had not played to his full potential even though he had topped his group in the round robin stages. I, on the other hand, had played like a beginner with the tables completely beating me, but there had been so many other memorable moments that I didn’t care, I had had a ball and enjoyed every moment of it.
Just for the record, I picked up George’s cue the following week as planned, and as we were playing in an inter-club competition a few days later, I texted George to tell him I would bring his cue along. Immediately there was a text back “Keep it, I’m never playing the stupid game again”. His disappointment in his performance at the competition obviously hit harder than I imagined. Not knowing what to do or say I didn’t reply but the next day came the text I had been expecting. “Back out of retirement so please bring my cue tomorrow”. It just shows you that the game can get under your skin and once a billiard player, always a billiard player.
My time in my first Australian championships had been more than memorable. Disappointed in my own results but with the joy that watching top players bring, not to mention the many new friends I made, I just can’t wait till next year.
Hope to see you at the next Australian Billiard Championships, where there will be one less virgin.
Andy de Haan
Member of the New South Wales Hornsby RSL Snooker and Billiard Club
