My Life in Sport - Pub Games and other stories

What university students are missing out on in the current lockdown situation is that 'full university experience' that goes beyond the ostensible reason for their attendance, their subject. Universities do offer any amount of opportunity and it should be made use of while one has access to it. While I was at Lancaster to 'do' Eng Lit with a bit of Philosophy, I did manage to include concerts of various types which, in 1978, included The Clash, Elvis Costello and Third World as well as Beethoven, and taught myself pool and darts which I'd done not much of before.

One finds one's own way, knowing that Alex Higgins is the height of rebel glamour and needing to play a few shots. They are always possible on a pool table but much more difficult to execute at snooker.

Having made it up as I went along, I made easy progress through the college knock-out tournament, dispatching one of the 'team' 3-0 in the quarter final, finishing with a black down the cushion that didn't even occur to me as difficult in those early days. Except I was out of sorts in the semi-final and barely played a coherent shot. Thus, if I was in any way like the Hurricane it was by being 'mercurial'. But if I carried forward any of the education I took from there in Literature (and you can be the judge of that), the lessons in pool took me to the dizzy heights of the Portsmouth Pool League a few years later, playing for the town centre dive bar team against some disreputable opposition. 

Some of them didn't like losing and neither did I, walking home in disbelief having not won my first match and coming face to face with a need for a match play mentality rather than devotion to looking good. Much of it is about where you leave the white. Some of it is about making sure you pot the ball. In the Portsmouth League in 1983, a lot of it was about how the opposition's referee sees it.

But the great joy of 'winner stays on' outside of league matches was having several games in a row for your 50p as one's confidence grew and each successive opponent was new to the table. Less joy was to be had from the hustlers, like the one on a Thursday lunchtime who casually asked if I wanted to play for a pint. No, I didn't. So, we played and I, very unsurprisingly, won. So, did I want to play for a pint now. No, I still didn't and I was wise not to because I lost that one. But then some young, brash type came in and put his name on the board and, yes, he'd play for a pint. And got beat in short order. The wily operator said he'd have a pint of lager and went to the toilet but, rather than go the the bar, the vanquished firebrand followed him into the toilets and, after not very long, the pro came out, flustered, picked up his cue and announced he wasn't coming to play in there again if that's what happened. And such is the shadowy world of pub pool where sportsmanship and honour are not always top priorities if money is introduced into the equation.

We once had an exhibition evening with a pro called Leo 'The Hat' McMackin whose publicity consisted of having once played Higgins for £400. They didn't say if he won.

But the great days were in the 2000's when I met the best player I ever played, my mate, Gill, against who you knew you were in a match. It made you think, it made you concentrate and it made any success you might have all the more worthwhile. For a couple of years we were not a bad double act on pool tables in Portsmouth and as far afield as Fairford, Cumbria and Newcastle. I can't imagine picking up a stick to play again because it just wouldn't be there and I'm happy enough with the 1-1 I had against her last time, some years ago.

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One of the coterie I was a part of at University was Lancashire through and through, captain of the college darts team, admirer of John Lowe but not the 'Crafty Cockney', Eric Bristow, and so, having given him a game a few times, I made my debut for County College, who were bottom of the league having Played 4, Lost 4.

We made our way to Bowland College which was a good two minute's walk away on the campus precinct. As fate would have it on such monumental occasions, I was drawn to play last, in game 9 which, as it turned out, was the decider over three legs with the score locked at 4-4. You had to 'double in' to get started in those days and, having done that, I knew enough to get myself onto double 16 to finish, split it but got out on double 8. The Bowland man equalized to set up a one-leg shoot out.

I can't remember now how that went but I think it was tight. I don't know which double it was. It might have been the finish I've already attributed to the first leg but I hit it, County College had recorded their first win and although the other four who had won their matches had made just as significant a contribution, for all the world it looked as if it had all been me. Joy was unconfined among the County faithful and I was an instant darts celebrity, of a very local sort.

I played for a year in which time I hit two 180's, one in a warm up and one in a friendly. I was part of the Mixed Doubles team that won the College knock-out, the final being nothing special with both sides hoping the other could hit double 1 and end the misery but somewhere upstairs is the wallchart record of it that records all the glory and none of the misery. We were knocked out in the preliminary round the following year and I went on to develop the 'yips', or 'dartitis', the condition that afflicts players who can't let go of the dart. I attributed that to thinking that I had reached a certain level and didn't want to commit to any throw that wasn't going to go where I intended it. Eric Bristow suffered the same affliction but not before he'd made a few quid out of the game. 

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I think we've covered all the sports I ever did at any organized level by now and almost come to the end of the litany of modest achievement in often low-grade competition lit up only by the quaint quality of anecdote. Except that I was once selected to play Gaelic Football.

When we were about 16, the lad from the Irish Club recruited three of us from school to play in what he said was the final of the cup and we would get either a winner's or runners up medal whatever the result. Looking back, and for many years since, it has seemed an unlikely story that a team good enough to make its way to a final should find itself three players short but one of the more marauding members of the first XV pack, the golden boy scrum half who played for England under-19's and I, regarded as a fine exponent of the round ball game, turned up on a Sunday afternoon on the pitches out by Haw Bridge on the way to Maisemore. I was picked up from home by Brendan with the cartoon Irishman who ran the team. I'm already starting to think I dreamed all this. It was about 44 years ago.

I think the formation of a Gaelic Fotball team was 4-3-3-3 but that is not supported by looking it up on the internet. But, as a natural goalscorer in Association Football, I was put in as middle of the front three, purely on reputation.

Gaelic Football isn't quite rugby but it's certainly not football, either. The goal is a mixture of both. What I remember of the first half is how very quickly it all happened, how I was always a yard short of getting to the ball, which was always in the air and up for boisterous grabs rather than being played in to my sophisticated feet. I don't think I got a touch in the first half and found myself re-shuffled back into a midfield position at half-time, which was a relief even if it put an end to any remote hope of scoring a goal, whatever I needed to do to achieve that.

Gloucester Irish Club, if that was who we were playing for, got thrashed. I was never more glad to get off a pitch as I was to get off that one. And, no, there was never any sign of a runners up medal.