By Elliott West
Introduction
Women’s sport has been highlighted in the media in recent years with increased funding and coverage. In any sport, figures appear across the years that help shape, drive and modernise and in snooker this is no exception. To find one of these people, you don’t have to delve too deeply in the archives as this lady is a shining beacon in her area of expertise. She is of course, Agnes Davies.
Davies was a ladies’ billiards and snooker player, whose career spanned over an impressive 64 years. A multiple ladies’ champion, her victories spanned the years, from 1937-1982 and various final appearances from 1940-2003. A ladies’ professional champion and a pioneer of the female game, this Welsh lady was an innovator who deserves to be studied in greater detail.
Early Life and Career
Born Agnes Morris in Saron, near Ammanford in West Wales, Agnes was introduced to cue sports in her teenage years. Her father, who was a miner in a local pit, contracted the lung disease, pneumoconiosis through his labour and was forced to leave the coal mine. With his compensation money, her father decided to purchase a one-table snooker hall in the village and so Agnes was drawn to this phenomenon. Aged 17, Davies start to show her aptitude at snooker and entered the women’s amateur championship. A tournament that she she won on her first attempt and without losing a single frame.
A player who was very conscious of her local community, Agnes competed for Saron. Remarkably, this innovator received very little prejudice within in her local area but people in the wider towns were less accommodating. When she once tried to play at a working men’s club in Llanelli, she was refused entry by the club committee, an encounter that Davies recalled :
“The committee of a working men’s club in Llanelli wouldn’t let me in, but they wouldn’t let their own wives in either.”
Agnes Davies
In 1949, Davies travelled to London and entered the Ladies’ Snooker Championship at the snooker mecca, Leicester Square Hall. Home of the professional game, Agnes played under her maiden name and reached the final. Her opponent was the legendary, Thelma Carpenter. Carpenter led the match 5-0 but then became distracted by a busker outside. As a result, Thelma didn’t win another frame and lost the match 5-10.
With a suave of titles to her name, Davies had to put her passion on the back-burner due to her commitment to motherhood and a lack of competitive opportunities, causing her to retire after thirty years in the sport. However in 1978, with the distinction between the amateur and professional game abolished, she returned to take part and subsequently win the Women’s Billiards Association snooker title.
Then, at the age of 60, Davies reached the final of an official Women’s World Open Championship, sponsored by the famous brewery, Guinness. On this occasion, she lost to Australia’s Lesley McIlrath. However, despite this defeat, she went on to win the Pontins Ladies Bowl in 1982.
A trailblazer who believed that the women’s game suffered in the shadows of the men’s equivalent, she cited a comment made by the amateur player, Roger Brown when she played him at a North Wales holiday camp in 1976. Agnes had previously broken her arm and had it in a plaster for the match. An ailment that Brown picked up on after losing the match and not knowing anything about the player he had just been defeated by, saying :
“I’ve just lost lost to a grandmother with a broken arm”.
Roger Brown
Agnes carried on playing for many more years, making a highest break of 84. She played for Wales in the home international series until 1999 and for two further years, for Ammanford British Legion and then for Ammanford Snooker World. A longevity that spurred on by the death of her husband and using her sport to come to terms with her loss. In 1985, Davies was elected as the life president of the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association. She passed away in February, 2011, aged 90.
Summary
Agnes Davies was a credit to the female game and someone who championed cue sports, especially snooker. A contender who regularly had to face prejudice from men, Davies excelled in the glare of adversity and showed that anything was achievable when hard work and mental aptitude was applied.
Roll of Honour
Welsh Ladies’ Snooker Champion: 1937-1939
Welsh Ladies’ Billiards Champion: 1939
Women’s Amateur Champion: 1939, 1978
Women’s Professional Snooker Champion Runner-Up: 1940, 1948, 1949, 1950
Pontins Ladies’ Bowl Champion: 1977, 1982 Runner-Up: 1979
Guinness World Women’s Snooker Championship: Runner-Up: 1980
Ladies Regal Scottish Masters: Runner-Up: 1999, 2003
