British Open Championship

Two Sheppey players Ray Farbrother and Tony Gray had made it through to the finals of The British Open Pool Championships to be played at The Spectrum Arena Warrington, Myself, Malc Fisher And Mick Macey accompanied Tony Gray, Ray Farbrother made his own way there along with some family members , We all stayed at the Boar’s Head pub just outside Warrington, This was on the Friday night the draw for the first round had already been made the 96 players were drawn into 16 groups of 6 with one seeded player in each group, Ross McInnis from Scotland was the seeded player in Gray’s group i cannot remember the seeded player in Farbrothers group, Each group were allocated one of the 16 tables the 6 players played a round robin best of three frames, The top two in each group would make up the last 32 for the Sunday finals, Tony Gray won all his matches to come top of his group, Kenneth Leeson, being the only player to take a frame off Gray, Ross McInnis came runner up , Although i did not see all of Ray Farbrothers games he also won his group and made it to the last 32, After some pro from the USA Earl ( The Pearl ) Strickland performed some trick shots, The draw was made for the finals, Now the Favourite for this event was Big Dave Dolman, At the time England Capt, The names were drawn from the bag, Tony Gray will play Dave Dolman a sigh of relieve went around the venue from the other players, At the time we had never heard of Dave Dolman like wise no one had heard of Tony Gray except Ross McInnis, Ray Farbrother Drew Derek Nimmo Again we had not heard of him, Sunday morning all 16 Tables were used to play the first round Best of 5 Gray’s table was right out in the middle of the Arena while Farbee’s was near the edge, Although we tried to watch both games it was Gray’s match that was drawing attention because of who he was playing, Tony was an out and out attacking player in those days if he thought he could get the clearance he would go for it, Hence he went 2-0 up, On the table next to Tony was Ross they were standing back to back Ross leans back and asked Tony how you doing, Tony 2-0, Ross 2-0 down, No 2-0 up, FUCKIN HELL says McInnis in his broad Scottish accent, Back in the 1980’s the rules were not as they are today no balls had to hit the cushion from the break, Dolman on his break trying to save the match just tapped the pack and managed to win a drawn out frame, But Gray took the next frame to dump Dolman out of the event, BIG CHEER from us, Ray Farbrother ( Farbee) on the other hand played a more tactical game always looking for an edge but eventually lost 3-2, However Derek Nimmo did go no to win the event, Tony Gray’s next match was against the Northern Island champion Paddy Coombes, This was again best of 5 frame match and both players played some tasty pool that went to 2-2, all on the last frame then, Gray cleared the table and had a shot on the black, 9 out of 10 times Gray would have got this black but the pressure got to him, he got down and played the shot to quick and the ball rattled in the pocket and stayed up, We all still thought Tony would win this Game but the Irish Man pulled off some unbelievable shots to take the frame and the Match, Tony Gray picked up £150 while Ray Farbrother got £75.00 it had been a great weekend and we had seen some of the country’s top pool players Ross McInnis went on to become an 8 ball pool legend in Scotland, Tony Gray went on to become one on The Isle of Sheppey,

JVA “THE POOL YEARS”