By Elliott West
Introduction
Next month marks the 40th anniversary of the creation of World Women’s Snooker. Formed on 31 July 1981, this was a response to a true uncertainty that the women’s game could survive. Like so many sports in this period, it took women with real courage to break walls down in order to succeed. Mandy Fisher amongst others formed a committee of seven members and named it the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association.
If it hadn’t been for the true trailblazers of the women’s game, such as Agnes Davies whose career in snooker spanned 64 years, Vera Selby and later Karen Corr, Allison Fisher and Mandy Fisher, their sport may well have receded to the fringes or even ceased to be. Thankfully this was not the case and through years of hard work and promoting, we now have a sport that receives media interest and tournaments that are played across the country and abroad.
The Next 40 Years
Over the last 40 years, there have been over 320 events staged with more than 630 individual tournaments for women and girls across the globe. Moving forward, there has been exciting news that the women’s circuit is to become an official qualifying pathway to the World Snooker Tour for the first time, in recognition by the professional game. There has also been the announcement that the two top ladies on the tour, Reanne Evans and Ng On-Yee have been offered and subsequently accepted two year wild cards on the main tour.
Despite a small number of dissenting voices from a section of the snooker community that this is unfair and these two players should go through the same qualification process as the men, this is very welcome news and hopefully, we will see both of these ladies thrive and get results.
We have also seen Rebecca Kenna make inroads into the qualifiers for the World Championship and Q School, narrowly missing out in both but showing her natural skills and putting to bed that this is man’s world. Kenna has already had to battle her local snooker association, not being able to play due to her gender and so this is another step in proving that anything is achievable in life through dedication and hard work.
It has been a hard twelve months for the women’s tour with no tournaments being able to be played due to the pandemic and restrictions in place. However, as times improve, it is reassuring to see women’s snooker pick up the pace again with their first tournament in the calendar being the UK Championship at the Northern Snooker Centre on 04/09/21, followed by the Australian Women’s Open in October in Sydney and the Eden Women’s Masters in November at Frames Sports Bar in London. A framework for a steady path and one that is still reaching out to future partners in order to strengthen and expand the current tour.
Summary
The women’s tour has faced major battles in its history and formal recognition in the last forty years. Under the guidance of Mandy Fisher until the present day, massive inroads have been made and in the last couple of years, the benefits of this hard work have shone through. The Women’s Tour is now in a good place and through attracting new players to the sport and the natural progression of the current players, the game has highly bright prospects for the next forty years of its career path.
