1950 – 51

In the Huddersfield Area English Amateur Championship, Jack was drawn against Leslie Driffield, the existing Yorkshire Champion. Driffield must rank as the best amateur player in the county, and Jack (on his own admission) was outclassed. In the first leg Driffield had breaks of 131, 165, 109, 132, 88, 73 & 53 to lead by 938 – 257. In the second leg he continued his good form with breaks of 149, 126, 59, 85, 99, 86, 96, 76 & 53, and finished with a win of 1926 – 489. Driffield’s average per visit to the table was 39.3 as opposed to Jack’s average of 10. Jack did receive another certificate from the Control Council to say he was a runner up in the Yorkshire Area of the English Amateur Billiards Championship. It would appear that the Council have now reverted back to Yorkshire after letting Huddersfield organise their own area for a while. The certificate can be viewed better on the Memorabilia page of the site.

In the Yorkshire Billiards Championship, Jack played Huddersfield veteran Harry Sisson and, after the first leg at North Ward Liberal club, was losing 200 – 400. Sisson went on to take the second leg with a score of 400 – 210, winning the match by 800 – 420. It just goes to show that age isn’t necessarily a factor in the game – in fact, it is possibly an advantage.

There was only one report for the Huddersfield Billiards Championships, which tells us that Jack had a lead over Harold Burkinshaw of 252 – 181 in the first leg of a game played in November. How the game was finished is not known or reported. However, we do know from the handbook that Harry Sisson won the billiards championship, beating Jack Brindley by the narrowest of margins 600 – 585. Jack Brindley won the snooker championship, beating Gladney Hoyle by 3 frames to 1.

There haven’t been many newspaper reports in the last few years, but the few we do have haven’t mentioned Brindley. He is obviously a very good player to reach both finals and I think he has only just moved into the area. This statement found in a 1953 report said he used to play in the Barnsley-Doncaster area, which seems to confirm my idea of him moving recently.

There were quite a few reports of the Yorkshire Inter-District League games but not all the games are reported, so below I have listed the ones I know of. One stand out match was that of Gladney Hoyle who played against a shell-shocked N. Holliday – shown here on the left. On his own table or not, to produce a score line of 200 – 3 is some effort. Over the next 8 or 9 years, Jack saved numerous cuttings of Huddersfield’s games in the competition and if you read on you will realise why. I won’t show you all of them but will add in the odd one or two, especially if they are noteworthy like this one.