By Elliott West
“The calmer you keep, the more you can concentrate on the game. You just have to go in feeling you’re going to win.”
Alf Nolan
Introduction
One of the pioneers of women’s snooker has to be Vera Selby. Selby had a very successful career in billiards and snooker, winning the Women’s World Open Championship twice in both 1976 and 1981 and the National Women’s Snooker Championship between 1972-1976 and again in 1979. She was also the World Billiards champion from 1978 to 1978.
Career
Born in 1930, in Richmond, Yorkshire, Vera was first introduced to billiards by her Uncle at six years old. Selby would spend hours in his Newcastle cellar watching her relative play. Considered them to be more of a pastime, Selby kept her love of the game as an interest, parking it to pursue a career in fashion, studying art and design at Leeds University. A career pursuit that must have made her father very proud, a man who managed a Freeman, Hardy and Willis shop.
Vera went on to become a senior art, textile and dress designer at Newcastle Polytechnic. However, during this budding fashion career, Selby at the age of 36, was seen playing by the former British amateur billiards and snooker champion Alf Nolan. Nolan. Nolan spotted her natural talent for both billiards and snooker and decided to harness this flair and take her under his wing to coach.
Vera Selby was definitely a slow burner in cue sports but one that was definitely worth waiting for. A sportsperson who won a suave of titles in both billiards and snooker, dominating the women’s game in the 1970s. In 1976 she became the first-ever women’s world champion in snooker, claiming the title by defeating Muriel Hazeldine 4-0 in the final, a tournament that was held in Middlesbrough. Her second title came in 1981, beating Mandy Fisher 3-0 in the final and making her the oldest female world champion in any sport at the age of 51.
Vera continued her passion for snooker, long after putting down her cue. A qualified referee and the chairman of the North East Billiards and Snooker Association, Selby also successfully tried her hand at commentating for five years and was very successful. Who can forget her commentary on the classic Crucible first-round match between Steve Davis and Tony Knowles in 1982? one where Knowles shockingly defeated the reigning champion, Davis and won 1o-1. A groundbreaker, who followed in the steps of other great women who picked up a microphone in sport, including Thelma Carpenter, the former champion in billiards and snooker in the 1930s and Joyce Gardner, one of her rivals, who gave her thoughts on the clash between Joe Davis and Horace Lindrum at the 1946 World Championship for the princely sum of six guineas.
Vera Selby went on to receive a lifetime achievement award for services to billiards in 2014 and an MBE for services to snooker and billiards in the 2016 Queens’ birthday honours list. A decoration that she received from Prince Charles. Selby later recalled the encounter with Rob Walker, saying:
“It was wonderful. Prince Charles gave me it. He said ‘you don’t look like a snooker player.’ I replied, saying we weren’t all big butch male players and he laughed.”
Selby, now in her nineties, still promotes billiards and snooker for the older player, championing the benefits of the sports on maintaining agility and mental fitness, saying in 2016:
“It guards against dementia and it’s a physical thing as well as being mental. You are not getting fresh air but you are walking round and round the table.”
Summary
Vera Selby is definitely one of the key figures in the history of women’s billiards and snooker. A woman who pushed the boundaries of sports, maintaining a successful career in fashion at the same time. A role model for those who followed in her footsteps, Vera is a figure that is well respected and loved amongst the snooker community and one that continues to be mentioned as a figure who cut red tape and showed that anything is possible in sport, a pocket dynamo.
A woman who said that the men in the sport didn’t phase her, they just looked sheepish and congratulated her, once competed for the English Billiards Championship at the Windmill Snooker Club in Soho, wedged between a strip club and an X rated cinema, even innocently practising at the scene of a murder once, when two Chinese lads had a fight with one snapping his cue in half and jamming it into the other’s throat. A true sporting hero and someone who when she was a referee, even mended the odd bow tie, even sewing up a player’s trouser zip which came unstuck in the middle of a match. She also appeared on the programme Countdown in later life. A sportsperson attributing her success to her coach, Alf Nolan who had that initial belief in her ability to succeed.
