Agree with you Bear, Peter Loft is definitely outstanding!

Correction -

4,Ray Wootton - not many peoples choice but on his day he would blow anyone.

My personal choice for the "Alex Higgins most naturally talented" Award would be either Keith Walls or the man, the legend - Neil Dodds. What a player, like my onions he's at his best when completly pickled.

Laters,

Slug master

Bizarely, I have never played most of the recognised top players. In almost 20 years of playing I can honestly say that I never played Paul Frost and I can only think of one time I played Peter which was in a singles tournament at the Naval Club. I broke the tip off my cue on the break of the first frame and used a pub cue off the wall for the rest of it, got beat 4-0. I think Brian whatsit (the geordie guy) organised it. In fact, I played Peter in one frame at the Interleague qualifiers and that might be the only other time Ive played him. I always liked Peter, the main reason being that he was the only other person I knew who was any good at pool and still wore a big pair of glasses. I didn't become short-sighted until I was about 13 so I found it quite comforting that while I was getting called all sorts of names for having a pair of 'Dennis Taylors' , Peter was wearing something similar and it certainly didn't affect his play. I dished up Steve Avery when I was 16 in the all-time greatest pool cup match against the Naval and all the way through I could hear Avery calling me Superman, Clark Kent etc etc to put me off. All I did was think to myself that it was no big deal because Peter would cope with it if he was in my position and he is one of the best. I wonder if there still exists a copy of him playing on the late night Shoot Pool Tv show still exists ?? :)

Paul played for two years at the Irish club with me so I did get to see him play a lot more than Peter. He was excellent but I always thought that it was his patience that won him so many matches. He could grind out a frame over a couple of days if that was what it would take to win. From my dodgy memory I can recall him finishing top of the county averages when we won the Region 7 title and going on to play for England. Someone can probably correct me but I think he ended up winning an incredible 24 out of 27 for England and they still dropped him at the end of the season ! ( 'face' and 'fits' springs to mind). No one had the patience that Paul had to wait and wait for an opportunity. There were so many of his frames where almost every ball was wedged over the same corner pocket and he would happily tap-tap-tap into them for ages until his opponent cracked and made a mistake. I dont believe anyone was better than him at the old rules in that respect.

Vince Nicolleti was my mentor as a kid. He was the person who got me into playing pool for a team. I used to go to the Holy Family club in Trelawny Avenue with my parents and would play some pool in there on Saturday nights/Sunday afternoons. Vince was in there one day and I played him five or six times, he wiped the floor with me and kept giving me some pointers. Being a know-it-all I threw plenty of strops and didn't listen to him. At the end of it he gave me 50p to cover the money I spent on trying to beat him and he got me to play for the Holy Family in the last few summer league games. When the season was finished I got taken on by Colin Chambers at the Irish club where I first met Pat Phelan, John and Peter Shiel and Steve Payne.

In an 'Return of the Jedi / Yoda' moment, I returned to Vince to play at The Brambles a season later to complete my training. I played for Vince on and off for maybe four years at Brambles and the White Horse .We shared some common interests in gambling, playing pool and both enjoyed the taste of the cherry Poteen (irish illegal drink if you didn't know) that he would carry around in a hipflask.His excellance as pool player and a entertainer was only tempered by the fact that Vince could start an argument in an empty room when he was in a mood. Him, 'Shag' , Pat Berry, Jessie James and the Cashmans fell out with each other more times than Tom and Jerry.

Difficult to compile a top 5 because I didn't play enough against some players to really judge. But if everyone was at their peak I would have a poke at :

Old Rules
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Paul Frost

BAPTO
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Peter Lofts
Mark Hopkins - he beat me 7-4 in the Reading Post semi. I never saw a performance like it. I missed two or three balls at most and he was clinical. I think he beat Richard Broumpton in the final on the deciding frame (or it could have been the other way round)

New Rules
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Brad Robinson (that's a tenner you owe me !) :?

Scott Yardley - there was one Yarmouth weekend where Scott, Brad and I were in the 3 man and Scott was outstanding. He made the semi or final of the flyers and on the Saturday was phenomenal in the 3 man itself.

Overall Number One
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Steve Payne. There was a period in the early 90s where Steve was untouchable. He won 3 singles titles in a row and we ended up giving him the trophy. He beat Paul Frost when the pair of them were at the top of their game and was deadly. I think he suffers a bit from the fact that on a table he is so boring. Ive played at least 15 seasons with Steve, different pubs, different venues, different rules and I don't think I have ever seen him pot a double. The reason is he doesn't play that way, everything he does is so monotonous you forget just how good it is. Its like Steve Davis in the 80s or Hendry in the 90s, its not exciting its just Payney. Ive seen about 6000 of Payneys legendary limp handshakes and I would think 5800 of them have come after he has just potted the black. Simply the best.

You picked 4 of my 5 reporter i knew one of my 5 people wouldn' agree with it's just personal experiences I sort of agree with payney being no 1 I have played him about 10 times and he's probably winning 7-3 but over 1 frame i'm probably about 8-2 up I'm more renowned for 1 frame pool especially as I get older but then again I did reach last 16 of an IPA tour and had england trials as you have, think we all just lack the practice to be top drawer but pretty happy !!!! Life could be worse !!!

What is needed (and what has always been lacking ! ) is a decent set of singles tournaments. All we have is the yearly crap-shoot in May/June time playing best of 3 frames.

I would scrap all these two leg cup games and use the six spare weeks to have a proper singles tournament. Take 48 entries or so , pull out 12 venues and put four players at each playing best of 7.

A v B
C V D

Then the winners play each other best of 7 to have a venue winner. If you have an odd number of entries (say 47) then you put three players at one venue and play a round robin between them.

Take your 12 venue winners and repeat something similar in the next round but make it best of 9.

We have a couple of venues like Racks, the Irish and the Lady Haig where there are a couple of decent tables so they can take a few more players if 12 venues cant be found.

Its about time a proper singles tournament was run. If the league is now taking on a large sponsorship deal from the Lady Haig then there should be plenty of money and interest from players to make a reasonable prize pool. I would then schedule the final for a friday or saturday night when other players would be able to come down a watch it and give it some atmosphere.

Chaps,

How was the tournament in the Star at Caversham run ? I think something like that would go down really well. You are right though we definately need something along those line and maybe do it once a quarter.

Maybe we could run a a large tournament over a weekend ? How many people do you get attending the Berkshire Open ? Maybe we could run an open event ?

The Star was slightly different.

It was a yearly comp with a large entry fee (I think about £30-£50 something like that). Each year , whoever won their first round match was automatically entered the following year with a 50% reduction on the entrance fee. So as long as you won the opener it was only 20 odd quid the next time. That meant all newcomers paying the intial larger fee and also you had a regular attendance of the same people as they didnt want to miss a season and therefore lose their discount. It was all run on one saturday as I have a feeling it was limited to 32 players. So the 16 players who won in the first round would be drawn against 16 'qualifiers' in the next comp.

It would be good to see a singles league develop again. You need to take advantage of the fact that

a: its structured so the players will be in leagues of similar ability (this is a major plus when trying to recruit players)
b: you can schedule the games in advance so that players know exactly what time they are playing and who
c: promotion/relegation is very appealing to players who want to test themselves against the best.
d: you should keep the season to as short as possible. If it only lasts about two months you can run it more regulary and it remains in the minds and conversations of players. When the old league ran it became a topic of conversation during pool matches of "who did you play in the league / who do you play next week". When the word gets around like that more players will want to be involved.
e: The hassle part is when a player cant make a week and wants to reschedule a match, so you should set the fixtures so that one or two players play twice in a night and then have a spare week. They can use that to re-arrange a match.

It would be good to get this running.

I'd be up for playing in a singles league...