By Elliott West
“I’d been hanging around in Jason’s snooker hall in Ranelagh since I was eight. My mam used to come down there with a wooden spoon and chase me out to get me to come back and do my homework”.
Ken Doherty
Introduction
Ken Doherty is instantly recognisable wherever he goes and is one of a number of snooker players that have helped make the game the popular sport that is today. It seems an age ago when an eight-year Doherty used to sneak into Jason’s snooker hall in Ranelagh. He was crafty even as a child, being chased out of the club by his mother wielding a wooden spoon when he needed to go home and do his school homework.
His lucky break came early in life when he spotted a cue that someone had left behind in the club, warped and lonely. Plucking up the courage to go up to the manager, he asked whether he could have it and the manager said he could have it for five quid. What followed was a story straight out of a comedian’s joke book.
The Cheeky Transition
Returning home to his mother, Ken asked her if he could have five pounds to buy the sad and sorry snooker cue. Armed with the fiver, Ken went to a shop and changed the note for five one-pound notes, slipping three pounds in one pocket and two pounds in the other. So he went on his merry way and went back to the snooker club and approached the manager. Explaining that he had to come back to buy the cue, he produced the two pounds from his pocket and said that’s all the money he had. The manager took pity on young Ken and let him have it for the few quid he supposedly had. Doherty described it as “the best two quid I have ever spent”.
The Warped Victory
Fast forward several years and this was the same cue that helped Ken win the 1997 World Championship, beating Stephen Hendry 18-12. This same cue was instrumental in buying his impressive home in Rathgar, Dublin in 2005, set amongst a row of Georgian and Victorian houses. This is where the Dohertys spent many a year and his son grew up in the lofty expanse of the abode and the Virginia creeping vines that hug the building from the exterior. This gem of a purchase has served them well but sadly a new chapter has to be written.
Ken recently split amicably from his partner of 20 years Sarah and his son Christian is now attending a school in England. So it’s time to sell up and leave this vibrant house that needed no work to it and looks fantastic with the personal decorative touch that the Dohertys have left behind. The price on the housing market is a cool €2.5 million and a wonderful purchase by anyone that can afford that price tag.
62 Highfield Road was unique in Ken’s life because it provided a solace away from the hectic workload of snooker and punditry. Doherty had a rule that he didn’t bring his work home with him and that’s why there isn’t a snooker room in this house. Dublin runs through his blood, a place where he grew up and a city that he is proud to be associated with. However, the Irishman doesn’t have to travel far to play snooker, going to his own snooker academy that was set up in 2011 in Terenure Village.
Of course, Ken will miss the house and the local community but this isn’t somewhere that will sink into a forgotten memory, promising to make regular visits to the area. He still stays in the family home when in Ireland until it is sold and somewhere that is only a stone’s throw away from where his love of snooker all began, the site of Jason’s snooker club.
