The Guildford & District Snooker League is as the name suggests the local league for snooker enthusiasts in the Guildford area, which covers Chiddingfold 12 miles to the south, West End 8 miles north west, with most teams in and around the Guildford, Godalming & Woking areas of south west Surrey.

The league was formed in 1949 by several local players and has continued to the present day.

The format that they adopted was,

Teams must comprise a minimum of five players, who play as a four-man team, competing in a 4 x 1 frame match on a home and away basis against all the other teams in their division throughout the current season, 

One point is awarded for each frame won, and this format remains to the present, although there have been past proposals to change to a three man format with each man playing two frames (3 x 2) especially in the first division but this has always been rejected at our A.G.M. due to our 8.00pm start time, and the travelling involved for some teams who live out of town.

In the early days all matches were played on Tuesdays, but as the league grew and clubs entered several teams it was necessary to expand match nights to include Mondays Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with Thursdays reserved for the billiard league, the billiard league format is, a minimum four players per team, with each match being a three man team playing 150 up, with one point for every fifty points scored.

In recent years we have suffered a steady decline in the number of teams playing in the league, I don’t know whether this is general across the country or if it a local problem as in our heyday the late 1970s and 1980s we had 12 divisions with on average 13 teams in each, more than twice our present compliment.

But maybe with the advent of video in the early 80s, and then games machines and now computers, people’s habits have changed, we have lost a lot of the old players with not enough younger ones to fill the gap, plus many of the companies and village clubs who entered teams in years gone by have closed, and today’s youngsters with more money and choices think our lovely game is not as exciting as football, motorcycles, cars and girls.

Over the history of our league we have had several players of note participating among us, probably the most notable being Chris Ross who won the English Amateur Snooker Championship in 1976, and then went on to compete in the

1976 World Amateur Championships, which were held in Johannesburg, South Africa, with Doug Mountjoy of Wales returning as Champion.

This was in the days when you had to either win or get to the final of one the national amateur competitions to gain entry to the Professional Ranks, this Chris achieved, but sadly with no sponsorship, a full time job and a young family, he was unable to find the necessary time for practise and to compete at that level you need plenty of table time to maintain your standard.

Chris’ highest break was a magnificent 147, at a time when this was a much rarer event than it is in today’s modern game, it happened at Tony O’beirne’s Epsom Snooker Centre and I was the (lucky) guy he was playing, I managed to lose the frame 151 to 0 as I went in-off at the break.

Our league has over the years had several players chosen to represent the Surrey County Team, hopefully most are named below, if anyone has information regarding players that are missing from this list, please let me know and they will be added to this item.

Tony O’beirne who used to play for Merrow Village Club (my home club)

The late Paul Bagshaw who also played for Merrow

Neil Clayton playing for Merrow

Chris Ross of Woking who used to play for Old Woking Recreational Club

The late Mick Jackson of Woking, who played with Chris Ross and Andy Johnson at Woking Conservative Club, before they moved to the Old Woking Recreational Club.

Andy Johnson of Woking who plays for the Guildford Ritz, Rileys as of the new season.

Paul Quinnell who plays for Witley RBL

Neil Williams who played for Ripley RBL

Mark Leonard who played for Brookwood Hospital

Jim Angus who plays Billiards for Farncombe Social

Chris Marks who used to play for Guildford Police