June 2017 David Smith Collection
David Smith Collection
At the end of June
2017 the Snooker Heritage Collection received a call from
Peter Smith to say that his family had a lot of
Billiard and Snooker memorabilia that they would like to donate to
the Collection.
The items had been
collected by their Snooker 'mad' father David
Smith who had sadly passed away earlier that month. He was
described by the family as 'a man of many talents, David was a
retired police officer, driving instructor, snooker player, coach,
referee. Chairman and champion as well as a genuine friend to
many'.
Ray Reardon and
David Smith at the Eastbourne Police Club in 1988
David Smith being
presented with a medal for his Referring services by (whispering)
Ted Lowe
Peter Clare was
pleased to offer a home for all the items, which include numerous
books, coaching aids, snooker board games, match programmes, mugs,
videos, autographs, even small radio made to look like a billiard
table and a 'Timeframe' unit.
Shown here are a
couple of interesting items selected from the boxes of memorabilia
that was collected from Eastboune in July 2017.
The first item is a
bit of history as it records the first exhibition match played by
Ronnie O'Sullivan in January 1994 . The event was organised by
David Smith
Another item records Wantey's association with Snooker - this
autographed programme is circa 1975 when Rex Williams and Fred
Davis along with Sydney Lee travelled round the country playing
matches at local clubs providing an evening of snooker matches and
audience competitions.
The 'Timeframe' unit is quite large and heavy and it was Peter
Ainsworth who was able to provide some information on the
machine.These were just electronic snooker scoreboards which also
had a timer feature. They were introduced in 1992 for a variation
of the Pot Black TV series in which players (the top 16 pros) would
play at least one or two frames of snooker against the clock (each
show lasted at least 20 minutes), the final being longer. The
scoreboards were probably made available to the public from this
date, although I can't personally recall having seen any
advertised. The company producing them were based in Dundee,
Scotlandand called "Timeframe Snooker". Not sure, yet, if it works
but it is intended to be set up in one of the display rooms. For
further information on the TimeFrame unit click on this link
The above is just a
small tribute to David Smith and his family and their help in
preserving more of the history of the great Cue Sports of Billiards
& Snooker.
Acknowledgements - Peter Smith ; Peter Ainsworth
© E.A. Clare & Son Ltd.
2018. © Peter N. Clare 2018
Reproduction of this article allowed only with the permission from
E.A. Clare & Son Ltd.
