By Elliott West
Here’s another story of a cue that momentarily disappeared, this time from the possession of Alan McManus. The year was 1990 and the Scot was playing in the Dubai Duty-Free Classic. Probably an encounter that he would probably wish to partially forget as during the tournament he mislaid his cue and didn’t realise for two days.
On the Hunt
Alan, who usually kept his cue in his hotel room, decided to have a practice session but when he went to his room to pick up his cue, it was nowhere to be seen. The Scot in a frantic state had to think on his feet and had to retrace his steps. Having thought about where he last had his cue, he remembered that he last had it in the hotel’s coffee lounge two days earlier. Physically shaking, Alan returned to the scene but alas the cue was nowhere to be seen.
In desperation, McManus went over and enquired at the hotel reception. To his delight, the receptionist informed him that the BCE Alex Higgins cue that had cost him £15 had been handed in. This wasn’t the first time that this had happened. This cue was from a replacement for his last, which had been stolen six years previously. McManus had left his BCE John Spencer cue by a one-arm bandit at a holiday camp and the inevitable happened, the cue went missing, never to see the light of day again.
New Horizons
From that point on, Alan was much more careful and acquired his last playing from a man not with a dog but who had it in a locker in the snooker club in Hamilton. A cue that he has stuck with ever since but had a dark secret.
Alan realised when he was playing that the cue was threadless at the joint and subsequently came apart when he was playing in the tournament. A problem that he had to solve was by winding some insulation tape around the outside of the joint. In the long term, he had to go and see John Parris. John replaced the metal joint with a wooden one. A problem solved but a man of habit can never kick the habit. So McManus still continued to wind tape around the joint. In the end, he took it off but the cue looked thinner as a result so promptly put it back on.
The cue is a vast improvement from his first John Spencer cue that he bought from a sports shop for £19.99, aged 11. However whenever he comes across the man who gave him the cue in a local pub in Hamilton, he always jokingly greets him with the same line:
“When am I going to get my cue back?”
