History of the Brighton league

[toby1000]

I just wondered if there was a archive section on the Brighton website.I started playing in 1976 and played for several teams.Started off at my firms team Gross then went to play at the Snipe and then the BRSA club.Just been looking at some of the Brighton scores and there are still players playing who played when I was there such as Colin Smith,Micky Winder,Terry Race,Chris Tupper,Terry Malloy etc.Must have played against them some time.Some of the players who played with me were John Mcfarlane,Harry Leeson,Geoff Dobson,Alan Kipling,Micky Taylor.Also are the Woolven brothers still around Clive and Derek am sure some of the players I mentioned will remember.I always remember Harry Leeson as being a brilliant player and watched when he won I think his third Brighton singles title.Best most natural player I have seen.

[toby1000]

I forgot to mention I went to Brighton last weekend for the first time in a very long while and went to what was I thought was the open market but boy has it changed.I always shopped in London Road on a Friday evening went to Leesons and got my meat then went to Bardsleys chippy for my supper.But no Leesons there now.Have they moved or shut up shop.Also saw that the Snipe pub is no more.How about the other pubs in that area The long Man,Ladies Mile and the County Oak they all had teams but could not see them in your results.

Best one for you, Paul, to find what you're after, is to click on "Winter League" on the Brighton website and search for (towards bottom of the page) "Previous League tables" which goes right back to the mid-1960's.

Some of the team compositions are mentioned at random - for instance look up 1980/81 and you will see Dave Ingram playing for the Ladies Mile A (Patcham) - the pub across the road from the Snipe !

Whatever possessed him to give up the game for 20 years I don't know......he might have become World Champion by now ! (Oh, hang on, he is !)

Harry Leeson has a lot to answer for: he taught Jim Broderick how to play !

[BB Warrior]

Nov 21, 2014 11:13:57 GMT tommo III said:

Some of the team compositions are mentioned at random - for instance look up 1980/81 and you will see Dave Ingram playing for the Ladies Mile A (Patcham) - the pub across the road from the Snipe !

Whatever possessed him to give up the game for 20 years I don't know......he might have become World Champion by now ! (Oh, hang on, he is !)

Haha.... happy memories of playing in the lofty heights of Division 3 (or maybe 4?) in Brighton League all those years ago.

Basically, I was given a choice by my (now ex-)wife of playing either Darts or Bar Billiards, since I was much better at darts (and there was money involved in that) I chose darts and didn't play bar billiards again for nearly 25 years.

With the benefit of hindsight, I obviously made totally the wrong choice at that time.... I should have continued playing both darts and bar billiards and simply got rid of the wife!!

Sadly, a lot of the old players and venues that we used to play at are no longer with us, but it's good that some of the old faces are still around and are still great players.

[NigelS]

Toby I will point you in the direction of this link, a full league table from the 1976/77 season

www.brightonbarbilliards.co.uk/league_tables_1976_77.htm

I have been doing the website from 2000 so full records are only available from there, earlier records have been taken off trophies, chris tupper's old 3BQs and steve hurley's old bar billiards file. So there is a lot of stuff missing from the earlier days but there is as much there as I could find.

Colin Smith, Tupper, Winder still play together (and sometimes with Geoff Dobson). Terry Race played till last year and is a double world champion. Harry Leeson quit playing a few years ago, and won his 4th Brighton title beating ME in the final in 1999.

A lot of the pubs you mentioned are long gone from the league but from the 60+ teams in the 70's we are now down to 13 teams.

[dipper]

Tell me did the Mile Oak in Portslade ever play in the Brighton league. Has anybody got records for the old portslade league? I remember some great players from the Mile Oak when they were at there best, I think the Sussex team had all 5 playing for them, Steve Page and his dad Doug Page, Mick Ingram, Reg Mehr and for the life of me I cannot remember the name of there other player, a great team that used to win the Worthing league and Portslade league most years.
For a small league Portslade had some great players that used to win the Sussex inter league regularly, such as John Sullivan, Tony Owen and Peter Rourke.

Hi Roger,
Persons who might hold comprehensive records on the Portslade League would be Dave Jones or Mark James, both of whom started their careers there - as did Jim Millward and Gary Ridley.

I have had a look at the Brighton website today and can only find a Mile Oak team playing in a lower division in 1987/88, but that did not contain any of the big names of the Portslade League 'old school' - they would have kept to their own League and it was rare to double up in those days.

It is difficult to believe, but the early powerhouses in Sussex were Billingshurst, Horsham, Worthing, Littlehampton, Portslade and Hastings. As you say, Portslade had several in the County side at that time, as did the Horsham/Billingshurst 'old school' and Brighton only received any recognition for their players after getting an article bitterly complaining about the situation in the Evening Argus. They'd just won Interleague for the first time and have hardly looked back since !

The names of the Portslade players from those heady days can be found amongst my early Interleague records on page 33 of the Horsham website:
docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ata1Y76hpZMwdEJpb2NCUjVXUU1CcVlycDNUWEppQkE&usp=drive_web#gid=0

[dipper]

It was difficult to get into the Sussex team at that time, almost a closed shop as Doug Page was captain, I only got into the team soon afterwards by beating Doug in the Worthing singles final and myself and Graham Pound (theres a name from the past!)winning against Doug and Steve Page in the doubles on the same night.
The other player I was trying to think of was Steve Webb.

Those were good days Roger but tinged with a slight element of enmity.....Sussex AGMs tended to be volatile affairs with forceful characters such as Paddy Maguire. There was a phase when the Interleague format changed back and forth from one year to the next, Brighton favouring Home and Away and Worthing the One-Day format. There was one year when Brighton actually boycotted the one-day event.

Then one year a sensible chap called Steve Mariner stood up and said "why can't we have both systems ?" And the rest is history !

In those days also Interleague was divided into two groups of round robin games with the group winners meeting in a Final. The Draw was a random one (not zoned) and Mid Sussex and West Sussex were seen as "cannon fodder" (no disrespect intended, I wouldn't say that now !) and you could sometimes get drawn in a tough group and sometimes an 'easy' one.

Portslade was a welcome draw as their tables were always good (eg Mile Oak, Crabtree) but Littlehampton had 'difficult' ones (eg Beach Hotel, Spotted Cow). Mid Sussex and Lewes had some smashing venues (eg North Star Ditchling, Chequers Maresfield) and Hastings were virtually unbeatable at home but their team didn't travel well. Brighton had a mixture of good and bad venues, I remember playing at the Dorset Arms once and we had to wipe our feet on the way out !
And when visiting West-Sussex once with snow on the ground it was so cold inside the Oving Club that we kept our coats on all evening !!

[toby1000]

Thanks for all the replies as I said I started playing in 1976 and it was good to see the league tables for that year.We started in div 6 as Gross Social Club a and we got several promotions.Then the firm closed we then moved to the Snipe then the BRSA (british rail club)where the woolvens played including Clive and Dereks parents.I would guess I would have played at most of those pubs but the Albion was always the pub I liked best.Dennis was always happy to pass on a few tips.I dont know if the barman who was there is still there was his name Brian or Billy sure someone will know.

[toby1000]

Hi Clive cannot seem to find winter league just the winter league results

[toby1000]

I was just looking at the list of the Brighton mens singles winners and see that A.Kipling won it in 1985-86 and just wondered if that was the Alan Kipling that played with me in the early 1980s at the Snipe.I think we packed up in either 1982 or 1983 and before he joined us he did play for the Albion and his father was a regular there.Strange though as his name is not listed in the players profile section.Does anyone know the answer

Nov 24, 2014 7:46:37 GMT toby1000 said:

Hi Clive cannot seem to find winter league just the winter league results

Hi Paul,
From your earlier comment

I started playing in 1976 and it was good to see the league tables for that year.

it would seem that you have been able to navigate correctly, and it's just a case of not being able to see a breakdown for certain years.

Bear in mind that Nigel has been working with a limited amount of info and details will be sketchy: he can only display what he has been given by others. Brighton would not be alone in not being able to provide a full set of records for the 1970s and 1980s !

[milka]

My husband steve hurley has a big folder on bar billards brighton from the early 70s

[toby1000]

Hi milka how would I be able to see the folder

[milka]

phone steve on 01273958141 or call in at 279 hangleton way hove anytime , by the way  alan kipling works with steve at rottingdean sorting office royal mail

[toby1000]

I forgot that Alan worked for the Post Office tell steve to ask Alan if he remembers Paul who played with him at the Snipe

[BB Warrior]

Nov 24, 2014 10:32:14 GMT milka said:

My husband steve hurley has a big folder on bar billards brighton from the early 70s

I'm sure that Nigel Senior would also like to see that as it may give him some more historic information for the Brighton website.

[milka]

no problems may we should get a list of who int rested and meet in a pub on week sat if poss able

[toby1000]

I hope Nigel can get it all on the website so it is available to see it

[toby1000]

Hi Clive I am now in the Brighton website where again do I click on "Winter League" on the Brighton website and search for (towards bottom of the page) "Previous League tables" which goes right back to the mid-1960's.Cannot see winter league or previous league tables.
Thanks
Paul

Nov 24, 2014 18:53:36 GMT toby1000 said:

I hope Nigel can get it all on the website so it is available to see it

You're a hard taskmaster, Paul, Brighton website is already magnificent in its content.
Even I can't keep up with your questions, and I'm nothing to do with Brighton.
Poor Nigel ! He probably wasn't even on God's earth until around 1980 and here you are asking him about stuff from the 1960s.

And he already has the following on his plate:

- Updating of recent competitions on the AEBBA website;
- Working out of National rankings;
- Six issues of the AEBBA newsheet to compile for 2014;
- Final tipsters points.

Poor fellow has hardly time to draw breath !

[toby1000]

Hi again Clive did you see the reply from milka maybe that's the answer it is only the mid-late 70s and maybe early 80 that interest me.I printed of the final league tables for 1976-77 my first season in div 6 finished mid-table then promotion the next three seasons.Where have all those pubs and their tables gone 68 teams in 6 div's now probably 20 or less.

[toby1000]

Hi milka a big ask I know but would steve be able to scan and perhaps email some of these records to me more interested in players records.Just a thought.

Hi again Paul,

As someone who takes an interest in researching old history (for example for Mid Sussex, Horsham, B'hurst, Sussex and more recently for All-England) I know only too well how slow and difficult it can be to fill in all the missing gaps.

The point I was making was that Nigel will already have made as good a fist of it as he can, especially as he said this earlier on this very thread:

Nov 21, 2014 18:47:59 GMT NigelS said:

Toby I will point you in the direction of this link, a full league table from the 1976/77 season

www.brightonbarbilliards.co.uk/league_tables_1976_77.htm

I have been doing the website from 2000 so full records are only available from there, earlier records have been taken off trophies, chris tupper's old 3BQs and steve hurley's old bar billiards file. So there is a lot of stuff missing from the earlier days but there is as much there as I could find.

......so he is unlikely to want to go over the same ground again.

[milka]

Nov 25, 2014 8:36:49 GMT toby1000 said:

Hi milka a big ask I know but would steve be able to scan and perhaps email some of these records to me more interested in players records.Just a thought.

[milka]

Hi all if you like i can email them to you my email is [e-mail] ,Ive got a scanner

[toby1000]

Hi milka just curious but re you able to see the reply I sent earlier today as I can only see one page.I replied to your last message but cannot see it.

[toby1000]

My email is [e-mail] I did type the message earlier today but maybe forgot to send it as the phone rang as I was doing it.

[milka]

hI Paul having trouble with your email address it keeps bouncing back maybe y can email me and i can save the address please ty