By Elliott West
Introduction
The 1984 Australian Winfield Masters was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that had the pre-television rounds take place at the Parramatta Leagues Club in Sydney with the televised stage held at Channel 10 Studios in Sydney. With a prize fund, equivalent of £46,415 ($22,000) and a winner’s share of £11,760 ($12,000), this event took place in August, 1984. John Virgo attained the highest break of 122 and won $2,ooo. Made up of a mixture of Australian and overseas players, the final was contested between Tony Knowles and John Virgo in which Knowles emerged the victor, defeating John Virgo 7-3.
The Tournament
First Round (Best of 7 frames)
Willie Thorne beat Cliff Thorburn 4-1
Thorburn, the defending titleholder, fell at the first fence just as he did the previous January when defending the Benson and Hedges Masters title at Wembley. He won the opening frame but Thorne, fluent and confident, ran through the next four frames in a style which confirmed his rise to twelfth place in the world rankings.
John Virgo beat Doug Mountjoy 4-1
Virgo dropped the opening frame to Mountjoy’s break of 61 but led 2-1 and crucially went to 3-1 by taking the fourth with a green to black clearance.
Tony Meo beat Bill Werbeniuk 4-0
Meo took most of his chances while Werbeniuk showed no sign of emerging from his depressing series of results in the British season.
Kirk Stevens beat Paddy Morgan 4-2
Stevens dropped the first two frames and was not all that far from losing the third but once he had won it always kept a firm grip on the match.
Eddie Charlton beat Warren King 4-1
Charlton took both the second and third frames on the black to lead 3-0 instead of 2-1 or even trailing 1-2. King pulled one back but conceded the match with three reds still remaining in the fifth.
David Taylor beat Ian Anderson 4-2
Anderson levelled at 2-2 with a break of 99 before two breaks of 66 and 57 made Taylor the winner of an entertaining contest.
Jimmy White beat John Campbell 4-0
White took only 65 minutes to win in four straight frames, concluding the match with a break of 115, the highest of the tournament.
Tony Knowles beat Dennis Taylor 4-2
Taylor won the first two frames but Knowles turned the match with a break of 108 in the third frame as he went on to win without further loss.
Quarter-Finals (Best of 9 frames)
Virgo beat Thorne 5-3
Breaks flowed as each won two frames in the 65 minute first session, Thorne appearing the more relaxed and confident, Virgo edgy and careful.
Thorne took the first red on the resumption but missed a straightforward black and Virgo responded immediately with a 122 clearance, the highest break of the tournament.
The tense sixth and seventh frames could have gone either way. From 48-40 with two reds left in the vital seventh, Thorne led 56-42 on the green but Virgo took green, brown, blue, pink and, after some sparring, the deciding black.
Virgo’s final frame 90 came came in circumstances similar to his 122, Thorne taking a long first red but failing a cut back black from the spot.
Charlton beat Taylor 5-4
This first match to go the allotted number of frames was reminiscent of a prize fight- evenly matched battlers struggling through the last round after giving their all.
Charlton was never headed and Taylor did not level until 4-4 but his fluent 69 clearance in the third frame, after scoring only 12 points in the first two and trailing 0-54, signalled recognition of and respect for his talents.
Charlton’s 99 break ended on the colours when he raised the butt over the left centre pocket to play yellow with all balls on their spots. Virgo’s tournament top break of 122 thus held.
Taylor’s forcing blue at 91 prevented a clearance in the eighth but kept his chance alive for the 44-minute decider. Charlton’s 31 and run for safety after 29 minutes gave him sufficient edge, with four reds left, to box on until, by taking the penultimate red, he left Taylor needing the lot to tie.
Meo beat Stevens 5-1
Meo was always a winner as Stevens, pale and out of form, managed breaks of only 36 (a ‘practice’ minor clearance in the first frame when trailing by 62) and 37 (ended by in-off failed black in the fifth, his only frame success.
Meo’s burst of breaks (92, 82, 66, 35) for a total of 275-6 in the third, fourth and final frames enlivened a match in which his customary eager approach seemed influenced by Steven’s lethargy.
Meo ran four blacks, a pink and another six blacks in his 92 before breaking down on brown just out from the baulk cushion, with blue nearby and pink and black on their spots.
The final frame lasted only 14 minutes, Meo making successive breaks of 66 (six blacks, three blues) and 35 and Stevens conceding with one red left.
Knowles beat White 5-3
It was standing room only in the 300-seat auditorium for what the public regarded as the virtual final.
Expectations of big breaks went largely unfulfilled but Knowles’s second frame 80 to lead 2-0 and the nine smaller runs, from 33 to 49, were fast and cleanly executed.
The frame average was 14 minutes and Knowles led throughout, including 3-1 at the interval.
White, who had a stye in his left eye and who had re-tipped his cue only the previous afternoon, broke down almost invariably when thumping drives jawed.
Knowles’s 37 in the first frame and 40 clearance in the fourth included fluked reds in progress but he was twice thwarted by kicks (on black and blue) when under way. He set a total of seven snookers and was superior in general safety play.
Semi-Finals (Best of 11 frames)
Virgo beat Meo 6-2
Virgo went in-off from the opening break but, more assured in his approach after beating Thorne, came back immediately with a 51 break which ended with a kick on the black. He added 22 next visit: Meo conceded with four reds left and that set the pattern of Virgo’s dominance.
Another kick on a free ball yellow at 47-39 in the second frame might have been disastrous but the yellow rolled in and Virgo forged to a 5-1 lead at the interval.
His positional accuracy was affirmed in the losing third frame when he set five successive snookers with only five colours left in the following frame with second century break of the tournament. Meo’s chance of a table clearance ended at 101 on the 15th red – a jigger (rest) shot from midway on the bottom right cushion with all colours spotted.
Knowles beat Charlton 6-0
Knowles played up to his no. 2 world ranking, blazing through the first three frames in 44 minutes with breaks of 62, 69 and 50 (twice) for a total of 334-33.
With few opportunities the Australian never settled into the steady, grooved style which marked his best snooker.
As though sensing the whitewash, Knowles accepted the slowed tempo of the next two frames (29 minutes and 34 minutes) but won both comfortably before cutting loose again in the sixth, having breaks of 38 (second visit) and 35 (third visit) before Charlton conceded on the colours.
The Final (Best of 13 frames)
Knowles beat Virgo 7-3
The biggest crowd since Knowles v White saw more missed chances than expected at this level of competition although there were 14 breaks of 30 or better.
The highest was 54 by Virgo, who did not score again in the first frame when the run ended by going in-off on the second to last red.
In the second frame – again crucially – Virgo went in-off the potted brown (the cue-ball hitting three cushions en-route) when mopping up the colours.
Knowles, trailing 43-51, seized the opportunity for brown, blue, pink and black.
Virgo broke through in the third frame when Knowles , in play with 46 to trail by a point, missed the second last red. Virgo took both reds and the colours to the pink in a break of 32.
Knowles went in-off the pack at his second visit in the fourth frame which Virgo then dominated from a planted first red for breaks of 32, 53 and 38 to win 117-0.
Knowles went to the interval leading 3-2 by snatching the fifth frame with yellow to pink clearance after Virgo muffed the same opportunity. He had got to 47-52 with blacks from the last two reds, then missed the spotted yellow from a position out from the centre left pocket.
Virgo broke on the resumption; Knowles took pink and blue at his first visit, a break of 41 at his second and a 49 at his third; Virgo conceded on the green at 103-0.
Some bad misses marked the seventh frame which Virgo won on the black – his only success in the session. The first failure was by Knowles when with 19 to go to lead 50-40, he missed a slightly angled spotted pink to a top pocket from a foot away.
Virgo took the pink with a great shot from close to black in baulk near the left-side cushion he miscalculated his attempt at the opposite bottom pocket.
After a safety shot each, Knowles missed a cut black into the bottom right pocket, leaving a gift winner for Virgo.
In the eighth frame, Virgo conceded with three reds left, his only score coming when Knowles missed the reds from close range in attempting to play safe.
Virgo potted a good red after Knowles broke in the ninth frame but went in-off, his only six points coming soon after from a fluked snooker.
This was the only frame in which Knowles adopted the cavalier approach which had worked so splendidly against Charlton.
Virgo, who had a tendency to lift sharply on some forcing shots, succeeded with a snooker in the final frame to tail 28-52. He took the red, a brown, the colours to the blue but then overhit to jaw the pink with black handily placed. The leave presented Knowles with a sitter for frame and match.
Summary
Australia has long history of producing great players and tournaments. The Winfield Australian Masters may have been set in a television studio but it gave Australian players the chance to play overseas players on their own turf. Sadly in 1984, none of these Australian players made the final but it produced a final where Tony Knowles and John Virgo slogged it out for this prestigious title. In the end, it was Tony Knowles that was victorious and the win was tainted, only by the fact that this event was non-ranking. Knowles was a big beast of snooker, contributing flair and attacking play to the sport. A player who was one of the big guns of the period.
