Perhaps I spoke too soon last year, when I indicated that perhaps Jack was past his best, and only winning due to the lack of opposition. When the pressure is on it seems he still produces the goods, as can be seen in the final of the Huddersfield Billiards Championship and the last game in the Yorkshire Inter-District League. So despite a year of very few saved reports, Jack retained his Huddersfield Billiards Championship title, and Huddersfield retained their Yorkshire Inter-District Billiards Championship
No reports for the season and no titles to report on; there is just this picture in the Halifax Evening Courier, showing that Halifax beat Huddersfield in the Yorkshire League. It must have been one of the first times that Halifax had a team in the competition, and was a good scalp for them. Jack and Harold played against some of the players they had met whilst playing for Rastrick Constitutional in the Halifax Parish League between 1952/53 – 1955/56 – before the two of them were kicked out of the league for being too good!!!!
The Huddersfield side is somewhat of an aging team, with Jack now approaching his 54th birthday. I think I’m right in saying that Harold was, by now, about 62, and Gladney about 64. An average age of 60 though Albert and Colin in the Halifax side aren’t much younger. The only youngster in the match was Peter Tasker, not in the picture, who I think is about 28.
Not only was there a lack of newspaper reports, but there were no more Billiards and Snooker magazines. The last one I have is September 1967 – perhaps Jack doesn’t like the direction in which the new editor is taking the magazine. There is more of a focus on reporting professional players, with a much stronger emphasis on advertising. The July edition of the magazine has a front page photo and the September edition has a full page photo of the “Castella” Award. This award is sponsored by W. D. and H. O. Wills – I wonder how much money the magazine received from the cigarette manufacturer’s for the awards. I realise that the magazine need income to survive, but it really looks as if they had sold their soul to the devil. You may remember that eight years ago Jack received 1000 cigarettes from W. D. and H. O. Wills, and it seems as if they are targeting the game in order to promote their products. The company was the manufacturer of the Embassy cigarette, that became the World Snooker sponsors in 1976.
This is a copy of what Wikipedia has to say about what was going on in the coming years, and backs up what I have said about the way the magazine was going. There was obviously a lot of politics involved around that time, with a power struggle behind the scenes to see who ran the game. This isn’t the first time that the governing bodies have had arguments: in fact, I mentioned at the start of these pages that Willie Smith didn’t enter the World Championships more often primarily because of these arguments.
Everton was the editor of the magazine Billiards and Snooker, owned by the Billiards Association and Control Council, from the December 1966 issue until the February 1971 issue. According to Everton, he was sacked at the instigation of Jack Karnehm, the Chairman of the Billiards and Snooker Control Council (as the Billiards Association and Control Council had renamed itself) for “giving professionals publicity” by including a picture of four professional players on the cover of Billiards and Snooker at a time when the Billiards and Snooker Control Council and the professional players were in dispute over the World Billiards Championship. This dispute led to the Professional Billiards Players Association renaming itself as the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) and splitting from the Billiards and Snooker Control Council (B&SCC). Following his sacking, Everton established his own magazine, World Snooker. In 1972, the B&SCC approached Everton to take over Billiards and Snooker and paid him £1,000 to do so. Everton merged Billiards and Snooker and World Snooker into Snooker Scene, which published its first issue in April 1972.
Perhaps I’m being too cynical… I’ll leave it up to you to make your own mind up.
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Jack Mellor 