'West Midlands snooker league's recovery' 40 years after classic final

BBC News

19-04-2025

Forty years ago in the UK, snooker had its most widely watched moment as a peak TV audience of 18.5 million witnessed a classic on BBC TV.It was after midnight when Dennis Taylor finally triumphed over Steve Davis at the World Snooker Championship in what would be dubbed the '85 Black Ball Final'.The sport's popularity was at its height and, as a Chas 'n' Dave novelty song about the sport reached number six in the chart in 1986, it seemed many people in the heart of England were also going Snooker Loopy.In the era, more than 900 players were in the Staffordshire and West Midlands league and, while the sport struggled in the region at the turn of the century, fans say it is now making a recovery.
One Birmingham man who did benefit from snooker's 1980s boom and all the interest since is 66-year-old Steve Perry.For 48 years he installed and repaired snooker tables all over the country as well as in "Europe, Africa... all over the place".The 80s meant plenty of work for him in London too as "one company had about 26 clubs" and his timetable involved "private as well - people had them in their houses".
Mr Perry remembered: "Cinemas were closing down because VHS video was coming in. Cinemas were converted into snooker clubs. They had big, available spaces."You'd have industrial units used...[Snooker] opened up in all sorts of places."It was about getting in as many tables as you could to make the money. You could have 20 tables in one club. The biggest I ever did was 30."He thought there were more snooker clubs in the West Midlands four decades ago than today and that there had also been a decline in the number of working men's clubs since the 1980s.
Elsewhere in the Black Country in the 70s and 80s, some future professionals were honing their skills as the sport's popularity boomed.For one of them, Martin Clark, it all started at Sedgley Ex-Servicemens Club.After watching his dad play and being taken by his grandad, one day a team member did not turn up and, aged about 12, Mr Clark ended up playing against men.He said: "We had a big junior section at Sedgley...25, 30...it was really cheap - five pence for 10 minutes."If [a] club opened at seven, you had to make sure you were outside the club at 06.30 to make sure you got on."
'Rammed'
He also played at two Conservative clubs that no longer exist, Whitmore Reans and Wednesbury, with the latter's team of five featuring four who turned professional - Steve James, Anthony Harris, Jimmy Chambers and Mr Clark himself.He won the West Midlands title for a second time in 1986 and said about 300 people packed into a Wednesfield venue for it, adding "it was rammed"."Our county side, if we were playing [say] Derbyshire or Leicestershire, we would have two 50-seater coaches," he said."There wasn't a bigger league anywhere."Mr Clark turned pro in 1987 and reached several tournament quarter-finals - but now the 56-year-old is a tournament director at many major tournaments around the world.
The local league that "kick-started" his career was "still very good", Mr Clark said.Organisers of said league, the Staffordshire & West Midlands Billiards & Snooker Association, backed him up.They still have nearly 600 players across five divisions which each have 16 teams in them, organisers said. That total figure of 80 teams is the same as in the 1970s.The current numbers represent an upturn from a low point of 66 teams and the Covid pandemic was highlighted as a factor in that decline.League secretary Mark Poole said: "There were a lot of clubs...It wasn't very expensive to go out and play snooker."A lot of people played in the league for their night out in the week...They'd go out with friends and have a drink and something to eat."But in the early 2000s the league started to suffer with numerous clubs closing down and this continued into the early 2010s with clubs continuing to struggle due to the smoking ban."
Now though, the league has "started to recover," Mr Poole said.A snooker shootout competition of 10-minute frames earlier this season attracted what he said was a record 103 entries in one day.The league was also due to pay out record prize money of £750 to its individual champion.Old Hall Snooker Club in Bloxwich, which charges £5 an hour for a table, said it had trebled its membership in a year.Owner Ryan Watton added that, when he and his wife Kirsty bought it last year, the venue already had 1,300 members but they increased that to more than 4,000.They made "a few changes" including adding new tables, cloths and lighting.The club also started its own league across the 15 tables.Mr Watton said: "More youngsters...are learning to play at a decent level."People who work outside in the winter, we know if the weather is (bad), builders, gardeners, anyone who works outside, you know it'll be busy."
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