By Elliott West
Introduction
Ray Reardon is probably one of the most famous exports from Wales, dominating the snooker scene for the 1970s. A true champion, who notched up six world championship titles and helped rejuvenate Ronnie O’Sullivan’s career after he retired. However, this great sportsman who helped bring snooker into the modern era nearly didn’t survive a terrible accident in his early years of life. A turnaround that the player is always eternally grateful for.
The Collapse
Back in the post-war years, the expected thing in Wales was for your son to go and work down a coal mine and Reardon was no exception. Ray had started his career as a miner at the tender age of 14, travelling down dark and dank chasms to chip away at the black gold that fuelled the economy and powered the homes of South Wales.
After his parents moved to Stoke-on-Trent, Ray continued his career as a miner but one near-fateful day when Reardon was then 25 years old, he made his usual trip to work and crawled into the almost claustrophobic space of the mine shaft, wielding his pick to remove the blackened coal from the narrow wall that faced him. As he carried out his arduous task to break a massive boulder, the girder holding up the roof gave way. Thankfully the girder missed him and hit the boulder instead and created a protective space for him. Ray recalled the incident saying:
‘I was about a mile underground,’ he says. ‘I was trying to break this giant boulder and nothing I tried was working. I was kneeling down for whatever reason and then, just like that, bang, the roof collapses. The girder holding it up had come down but it hit the boulder, creating this tiny pocket of space for me”.
“ I didn’t have enough room to move an eyelid and I had to breathe through my nose because if I opened my mouth I’d suffocate to death on the dust”.
“I was kneeling down and my blood pressure was coming up because the blood wasn’t getting through to my legs. Three hours I was like that before they got to me. Three hours”.
“I had to concentrate on something to stay calm,’ he says. ‘I started imagining my brother Ron, who is 17 years younger than me. I was imagining we were home and playing marbles. Thousands and thousands of games of marbles we played in my head that day”.
This is probably one of the few incidents in Reardon’s life that prevented him from displaying his trademark grin and his shoulders remained firmly slumped, instead of jerking as they normally do. The former champion knows how lucky he was to survive this incident and had fate traveled in the other direction, the public would have been robbed of this natural Welsh talent.
Reardon survived with a back injury and subsequently changed his career choice from the pit to patrolling the streets as a police constable. Despite these obstacles that fell into his path of life, Ray continued his snooker career and rose up the rankings to become number one in the world. The lad from Tredegar did good and is now recognised as one of the greatest snooker players that had ever graced the green baize. From gas lights to television lights, reached his ultimate goal in life.
