Billiards: Meet the Cumbrian club keeping the sport alive

Billiards is played using only three balls - one white ball, one yellow ball and a red ball. It’s a game that requires a differing array of skills to snooker, although there are similarities between both sports.

In many areas of the United Kingdom, billiards has been relegated almost to extinction, as the television coverage and prize money has undoubtedly promoted snooker as the prime sport on the large 12ft x 6ft table.

Dave Midgley (Image: Supplied) Even the enthusiasts for billiards would agree that the game can involve large passages of repetitive play that may not carry the same entertainment value of top quality snooker, but billiard fans argue that their sport has complexities that snooker doesn't have.

There are hot spots throughout the country and the Middlesbrough area stands out as having produced several world champions. Current world champion Peter Gilchrist is currently defending the trophy he took from another Teessider, Dave Causier, in Walsall.

For almost 100 years, billiards (and snooker) have been played in working men’s clubs and snooker halls in Carlisle, with a billiard league running through the late summer and autumn and a snooker league in winter and spring.

Brian Sloan (Image: Supplied) Carlisle now has a group of enthusiasts who meet up and play hour-long games on Thursday nights, as well as their regular league matches on Tuesday nights, where they exchange ideas on how to improve.

Three of the world’s top players have held coaching sessions at The Qzone snooker club in Carlisle and several players have entered prestigious competitions up and down the country. The standard is improving quickly. So much so, that a few months ago, Cumbria entered the Inter-County Team Championships for the first time ever and reached the semi final stage.

The standard in the Carlisle & District League is improving all the time, with some players featuring in the World Billiards ranking list, alongside some of the greatest players from India, Australia, New Zealand and other many other countries around the world.

On Sunday November 3, Qzone is also hosting The Cumbria Billiards Open for the first time, starting at 9.15am.

John Metcalfe (Image: Supplied) It’s a competition which has attracted some of the top players from Teesside and Merseyside to come to Carlisle, straight after the World Championships, and the local organisers are hopeful of a good showing from the Carlisle players.

To make the tournament as accessible as possible, it is also going to be streamed live on the internet through their newly-created Facebook Live and YouTube channels, so if you can’t make it to the actual venue, there are options to be able to watch the event taking place.

Anyone interested in how the game is played, or want to have a go themselves, should get themselves into Qzone on a Thursday evening or one of the many clubs in the town centre on a Tuesday night that has a snooker a table and they will see the game being played.