By Elliott West
“I love snooker, it was a hobby and a pastime but it’s like food really… if someone were to say “Could you live without snooker?”… I couldn’t, no. I’ve got to find time for snooker. As a young lad I played all the sports but I always found time for snooker, it just fascinated me. I studied it and I studied the players that played it in those days – Joe Davis, Fred Davis and so forth, and they were my idols I suppose”.
Ray Reardon
Introduction
Ray Reardon ruled the snooker world in the 1970s, was world number one from 1976 -1981 and won the world championship six times (1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978). Yet this success could have easily never occurred. Reardon whose first job was working in a garage as a mechanic but gave it up after a few weeks after the car grime and grease used to get into the pores of his skin and make his hands look horrible. So it was a slight surprise that he swapped this role, shunning a place at Grammar school for one working as a miner, firstly at the age of 14 in his local colliery in Tredegar. Ray followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a Bevan boy, a job that allowed him to split his time between mining and snooker, giving him more time to practice at the Tredegar Mineworkers Institute. A place where he learned how to play snooker.
Being a coal miner was in a Welshman’s blood. The coal dust permeated your skin and soul, leaving you to rise from the pit after a long shift, blackened, sweaty and aching, ready to scrub yourself clean in a tin bath by the fire in one of the many terraced houses that filled the valley’s winding streets. Ray worked on the coal face but unlike the other miners who used their bare to cut the coal out with picks and shovels, Reardon used to wear a pair of white cotton gloves, primarily to keep his hands cleaner but subconsciously to protect them as these were his snooker tools. Something that he probably didn’t realise at the time as he was young and carefree.
Danger Strikes!
With all the coal mines closed in his area, the Reardon family moved to Stoke-on-Trent and it was here, 11 years later while working in a mine that an accident would occur. Ray who had used a pick to try and cut out the coal, couldn’t shift this stubborn black treasure. So he decided to use a pneumatic drill instead and as he began drilling, the roof of the mine collapsed, completely burying Reardon. He was trapped, not being able to move an inch of his body, paralysed by this black jewel that gave him a weekly pay packet. Yet despite this enormous danger, Ray went into champion mode. There may have been tonnes of rubble engulfing his body but air could still get to him to breathe. The trick he found was not to move because if you did, this dusky pit would become your grave, killed due to resistance, asphyxia and raised blood pressure.
Ray adopted a coping mechanism to survive, playing thousands of imaginary games of marbles with his brother in his head. His brother, 17 years his junior used to play the game with Ray when he was 8 years old. These mind games helped to keep Reardon calm and slow his breathing down to a snail’s pace. It would last for three hours before the rescue team arrived to dig him out. All he could think of at the time was to protect his hands, shielding them from the hardy metal shovels that could damage or cut them off and so end his promising snooker career.
Miraculously Ray emerged unscathed, apart from a few cuts and bruises with scars that turned blue from the coal dust that penetrated the skin. It is a story that this six times world champion often recalls in interviews and an accident that happened to his good friend Doug Mountjoy as well. An accident that would lead Ray to join the police force. Yet now in his 91st year, Reardon hasn’t had a sleepless night since not affected mentally in any way. An accident that shows the determination and resilience of this former snooker champion.
