This page features the master cuemen of yesteryear if you need a more comprehensive biography of the player please click on their photograph.

          MASTER CUEMAN No1  JOHN ROBERTS Jun

John Roberts Jun stands out as one of the great Victorians in the world of sport. He was to billiards what   W.G.Grace was to cricket, and had billiards continued its popularity, Roberts would be as well known today as his illustrious contemporary.

           MASTER CUEMAN No 2  W.J.PEALL

Never mind ‘pot as many balls as you can,’ how about, ‘how many times,without interruption, can you pot the black off its spot?’
Well a contemporary of John Roberts Jun was WJ Peall, whose claim to fame was his ability at billiards, to pot the red off its spot endlessly, when the rules allowed no limit to this form of scoring. His highest run was a break of 3,304.

              MASTER CUEMAN No 3 GEORGE GRAY

Australian "boy wonder", George Gray first came to England in the 1920's and proceeded to make phenomenal breaks mostly by playing the in-off shot into the centre pockets. From this scoring method he could make a thousand break almost at will. His top break was one of 2196.

              MASTER CUEMAN No 4 WILLIE SMITH

Willie Smith, a former linotype opertator from Darlington, only entered the Billiard Championship twice, and won it on both occasions. The first was in 1920 against Claude Falkiner, and then in 1923 he regained the title from Tom Newman. Willie was possibly the best non-specialised, all round billiard player of all time.

                MASTER CUEMAN No.5 JOE DAVIS           

For the first two decades of the 20th century, snooker was not taken too seriously, it was a relaxing break between the much more important bouts of billiards. One man changed this, setting the game up as a real test of strategy and skills, turning it into an exiting spectator sport and dominating it completely for over 30 years, both on and off the table. That man was the legendary Joe Davis.

             MASTER CUEMAN No.6 WALTER LINDRUM

The greatest