IT is not every day that a world champion is proclaimed on this Island – but it is every year.
Welcome to the microcosm of bar billiards – or, rather, the World Championships of bar billiards.
Every year the sport’s best players convene at the Merton Hotel to compete to become the next world champion. Okay, so the title is a little disingenuous given that everybody present was either from the home counties or the Channel Islands, but then you would be hard-stretched to find a bar billiards table in any other part of the UK, let alone anywhere else in the world (though you can find different formats of the table-top game in various parts of Europe).
The only surprise is that an entrepreneur hasn’t introduced the game to the hipster hoards with bottomless brunches through a themed bar in Shoreditch. Watch this space.
And so it came to be that Buckinghamshire lad Matt Jones held his nerve and his focus to become world champion for a second time after beating the three-time champion from Guernsey Trevor Gallienne in the final.
It was an easy win in the end for Jones; 17,690 points to just 2,580 on the board.
Jones broke for the first game and started at a terrific pace, consistently hitting consecutive runs of 150 points or 200 points for every shot. He was making it look easy as the clock ticked away towards the end of the first frame and, by the time he was ready to give Gallienne a crack at the table, he had racked up 5,350 points.
But Gallienne immediately fluffed his chance to respond, missing a pot on his very first shot to hand control back to Jones. The boy from Bucks could only muster 270 points on this occasion but then Gallienne failed to take advantage with a score of just 80. This time Jones was less forgiving, racking up 10,630 points and by the time the clock ran out it was 15,980 to 230 in Jones’s favour.
Still, Gallienne was far from out of it as it was now his turn to break for the second frame. In his semi-final against Brighton’s Nigel Senior, he hit a first frame score of 13,130. Something similar could put him back in contention.
But the Sarnian had lost all focus. Playing in a more unorthodox upright style, his first visit to the table ended with just 2,100 points and when he scored just 250 more on his second, bookending Jones’ 1,710, he shook the hand of Jones to graciously accept defeat.
The victor, whose previous title came in 2016, is a man of few words, and shies away from the limelight. He took the world crown as uneasily as someone who had been given their wallet back having dropped it on the floor.
“I didn’t play well today but I managed to get over the line,” said Jones, after a full day’s play.
“Obviously I played well in the final to put up a big strong early total, which Trevor couldn’t live with and [I was] lucky enough to put it out of reach in two breaks.
“It feels good [to become world champion]. It’s always fun to come to Jersey and I look forward to coming back next year.”
The tournament didn’t start well for Jones, losing two of his three group games and only progressing to the last 64 on points difference. But, he breezed through the knockout stages, as did Gallienne, who was unblemished in the group stage.
The furthest any interest from Jersey got to was the last 16 where both James Jeanne and Nigel Ryall came a cropper. Meanwhile, defending champion Kevin Tunstall from Worthing was knocked out at the quarter-final stage by Geoff Jukes.However, Jersey could claim their first singles finalist of any sort for eight years when Dave Lomax got to the Plate final and won, beating Reading’s Jon Scoones 9,600 to 5,230.
Two Islanders would get to the final of the Doubles Plate competition too, but Jeanne and his partner James Pallot did not have enough to overcome the combined might of Gallienne and Senior, gunned down 17,810 to 13,310.
Meanwhile, Sussex pair Jon Oakley and Martin Cole won the main doubles competition and the Peter Noel Memorial Trophy after a comprehensive annihilation of Brighton’s Chris Tupper and our very own Harry Barbet, 30,010 to 2,310.
At the end of the show, trophies and some pocket change were also handed out to Oxfordshire’s Mark Trafford and Brighton’s Jean Brackenridge for men’s and women’s highest breaks respectively in the competition, with Trafford making 15,310 and Brackenridge 3,900 – and the same faces will reconvene here again next year, as they have most years, for this most particular of World Championships.
