Virgo was a superstar of snooker in an era of them

Cavanman's Diary

It has been said, with justification, that television did for sport what the printing press did for literature. Some genres were just suited to the medium and randomly boomed. One of those was snooker.

So bright did the game’s flame burn in the 1980s that its after-glow has been enough to sustain it long after its glory faded. The acid test? Ask a casual sports follower to list 10 snooker players and chances are that at least eight or nine of the names proffered will be aged 50 or over.

One of those was John Virgo, whose passing last week will have likely barely registered with younger people. Yet, Virgo was a superstar relatively recently, a household name at a time when snooker was a household game.

Why did snooker, a slightly ostentatious big-house game of white-gloved officials which emerged among British military officers in India – where “snooker” was army slang for a rookie - and other far-flung locations, become so big? The advent of colour television was the turning point – billiards, a cousin, faded and snooker exploded. Clubs popped up everywhere; it became a working class pursuit.

Snooker’s golden era was the 1980s, as a scan through the newspaper archives confirms. For the first half of the 20th century, the game was referenced just a handful of times per year in the Anglo-Celt and Northern Standard.

It began to grow in popularity in the 1960s, peaking in 1966 with 43 mentions across both newspapers, but fell away again – in 1971, there were just nine mentions. But the chart began to rise then, peaking in 1985 – the year Dennis Taylor won the World Championships before a reported television audience of 18.5 million people – with 98 mentions of snooker across the newspapers in Cavan and Monaghan. Last year, that had fallen to 24 – one passing nod per month in each.

Most of the contemporary coverage is mired in the past, too – not that there’s anything wrong with that but it’s further evidence of the sport still dining out on its ‘80s and ‘90s heyday.

There are nostalgic columns, like this one, and, of course, the exhibition scene.

Last Sunday week, for example, Taylor and Ken Doherty played a well-attended exhibition in the Nuremore Hotel. That sort of after-dinner type circuit remains popular – the currency is one-liners and trick shots and trade is brisk.

While it has its devotees (the spiritual home of the game in Cavan is the CYMS in Cavan Town, where it thrives among young people and adults alike), snooker is in decline. Although it is relatively lucrative at the top level, with fewer young people playing it, the standard has dropped. Five years ago, Ronnie O’Sullivan, who turned 50 in December and is still ranked in the top 10 in the world, dismissed the up-and-coming group as “not that good really”.

“Most of them would do well as half-decent amateurs, not even amateurs. They are so bad,” he commented witheringly.

O’Sullivan – ‘The Rocket’ – is probably the last crossover star the game has produced. Characters sell sport and there is a deficit of interesting players in snooker – or maybe, like in Gaelic games, the characters are there but those in positions of influence are averse to allowing them express themselves.

It stands in stark contrast to the picture painted in Gordon Burn's magisterial Pocket Money; the author spent a year on the professional tour in the 1980s and charted some of the players, promoters and officials involved, including Taylor, Steve Davis and Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins, a gifted player, equal parts charismatic and dislikeable.

Taylor and Higgins, from, Dungannon and Belfast respectively, had known each other as teenagers.

By the early ’70s, by chance, both were living in Blackburn.

Taylor, quiet and shy, was running a snooker club in Preston; the hedonistic Higgins, living even then with a similar “lust for vomit” to Shane MacGowan, hustled for money, backed horses, and drank.

“At one point,” wrote Burn, “he (Higgins) was dossing in a row of derelict houses in Blackburn where, he claims, he kept just ahead of the bulldozer, with five addresses in one week: 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17 Ebony Street.”

Then, professional snooker was in its pomp, churning out gilded stars as if off a production line. Now, it’s like Detroit or, a cynic might argue, Cavan football – shrunken, neglected, in decline- its present perpetually dull and uninteresting when held against its dazzling past.

Virgo railed against that dying of snooker’s light. His playing career, at the elite level, was relatively ordinary; his greatest day was winning the UK Championship against Terry Griffiths. But the BBC cameramen were on strike at the time, so instead of a leading slot on Grandstand, Virgo’s triumph wasn’t covered at all.

He went on to struggle with gambling addiction, had a couple of failed marriages, and later became better known as a commentator, where his natural Salford wit came to the fore.

Due to television exposure, Virgo and his colleagues had a high degree of name recognition, something they retained among a certain cohort, yet they were approachable and real. If you were willing to pay, you could have these stars perform in your bar, hotel or club; you could even make money yourself on it.

In June 1982, for example, Virgo played Taylor for £1000, the best of 17 frames, in the Emyvale Inn on a Wednesday night. The organisers charged a fiver in; two days later, Phil Lynott played the same venue.

In 1996, ‘JV’ took on Jimmy White in the Hotel Kilmore in another exhibition; in this newspaper, the ad described him as “Trick shot wizard John Virgo”. In college, some lads I knew from the north managed to procure his phone number – I think it was from an exhibition he played in Newry – and would call him late at night. “I’m behind the blue here, John, what do you advise?” and that sort of thing. JV understandably didn’t take too kindly to it.

Virgo passed away last week in Spain, where he had relocated, with his third wife, in recent years. The game he played has gone full circle since he first took it up in the 1950s. It has been overtaken in every aspect – marketing, crowds, mass participation, money – by darts.

Barry Hearn of Matchroom Promotions was one of the drivers of snooker’s explosion in the ‘80s and repeated the trick with darts which, rather than attempt to tidy up its image, leaned into it. Hearn recognised darts as a pub game and created the largest pub in the world for its World Championships. From there, it all flowed and darts is now big business.

As for the grand old game of snooker? It was significantly bigger at its peak than darts currently is but against the raucous atmosphere and dramatic twists - ideally suited to our shortened concentration spans - darts matches can offer, snooker feels almost quaint.

Where, Virgo was famous for asking, is the cue ball going? Sadly, it appears, only one way.