All-Time Great Ray Reardon Passes Away

Ray Reardon, widely regarded as one of the greatest snooker players ever and a six-time World Champion, has died at the age of 91.

Welshman Reardon, who dominated the World Championship in the 1970s in a similar manner to Steve Davis in the 1980s and Stephen Hendry in the 1990s, passed away on Friday night after a battle with cancer, his wife Carol confirmed.

Nicknamed ‘Dracula’ due to his widow’s peak hairstyle, he was one of the most popular and charismatic figures of his era, loved by millions of fans for his brilliance on the table and good humour off it.

He was still playing snooker in recent months, and remarkably made a century break last November, a few weeks after his 91st birthday.

Leading the tributes, three-time Crucible king Mark Williams said: “Ray is one of the best sports people ever from Wales and the best snooker player. He’s one of the reasons why a lot of us started playing. He put snooker on the map, alongside Alex Higgins, Jimmy White and Steve Davis. Anyone playing now owes them a lot because they brought popularity to the game. He is a real inspiration.”

Reardon was born in 1932 in Tredegar and by the age of ten he was a keen snooker and billiards player. At 14, he followed his father’s footsteps and joined the mining community at Ty Trist Colliery. He wore cotton gloves, and while older men laughed at the habit, he was able to protect his hands enough to continue his hobby on the baize.

In 1957, after his family had moved to Stoke-on-Trent, Reardon was lucky to survive the collapse of a mine while he was working deep underground. He was buried in rubble for three hours, barely able to breathe. “I couldn’t move a finger,” he later told Michael Parkinson in a BBC interview. “It was amazing that with all the rubble and rock I was under, air still gets through. You have to keep perfectly still and not struggle, so I played thousands of games of marbles with my brother in my mind, until they came to my rescue.”

Soon afterwards, Reardon left the mines and became a police officer. During his seven years walking the beat around Stoke he won two awards for bravery – one for climbing across roofs to catch a robber, and one for approaching a man with a loaded shotgun in a crowded town centre and, in his usual calm manner, talking him out of using it.

Meanwhile on the table, Reardon’s reputation as one of the best amateur players in the UK was building. He won the Welsh Amateur Championship every year from 1950 to 1955, and the English equivalent for the first time in 1964, beating John Spencer in the final. In 1967, at the age of 35, he took the decision to quit policing and try his hand at professional snooker.

His timing was near-perfect, as in 1969 the BBC broadcast Pot Black for the first time, finding snooker an ideal showcase for the advent of colour television. This was a key moment in the sport’s history as, within a decade, it led to extensive live coverage of snooker on the BBC and the boom in popularity. Reardon was the first Pot Black champion, beating Spencer in the one-frame final, and won it again in 1979.

His first World Championship appearance in 1969 ended with a 25-24 defeat against Fred Davis in the quarter-finals, but a year later Reardon was holding the famous trophy for the first time. At the Victoria Hall in London, he beat John Pulman 37-33 in the final. That was the beginning of his dominant spell, as he went on to capture the world title in 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1978.

The last of those six victories was arguably Reardon’s greatest triumph as, at the age of 45, it made him the oldest World Champion, a record only beaten in 2022 by a 46-year-old Ronnie O’Sullivan. It was also Reardon’s only success at the Crucible, where the Championship had moved in 1977. He beat Perrie Mans 25-18 in the final and his modern-day record of six titles was not matched until Steve Davis reached that tally in 1989. Reardon reached one more Crucible final in 1982 when, age 49, he was beaten by Alex Higgins 18-15.

Higgins and Spencer were Reardon’s chief rivals for most of his hey-day, but he was without question the outstanding player of his era. Outside the World Championship, he won 16 other professional tournaments including the 1976 Masters. His highest break in competition was 146, made during the 1972 Park Drive event. In 1975 when the world rankings were conceived he was the first number one, and held that status until 1981, and then again during the 1982-83 season.

He remains the oldest winner of a ranking title, having beaten Jimmy White in the final of the 1982 Professional Players Tournament at the age of 50. A few months later he beat White again to win the 1983 International Masters, his last title.

He was ranked among the top 16 until 1987 and made his last Crucible appearance in the same year, losing in the last 16 to Steve Davis. Reardon retired in 1991 after losing to Jason Prince in the first qualifying round of the World Championship.

Though his peak as player came before the 1980s, Reardon’s fame grew in that decade as snooker became the most popular sport in Britain. He regularly appeared on TV shows such as A Question of Sport, Paul Daniels Magic Show and Big Break. Alongside Davis, White, Higgins, Cliff Thorburn and Dennis Taylor, he was a central character in the game described by Barry Hearn as ‘Dallas with balls.’ After retirement, he was in the public eye less, though he continued to play on the exhibition circuit.

He was always renowned as a great tactical player – indeed Davis learned much from Reardon during his early career in the late 1970s. In 2004, Reardon mentored Ronnie O’Sullivan, helping the Rocket to add strategic nous to his formidable break-building. The result was a Crucible title, and O’Sullivan always references Reardon as one of his great influences and friends.  Shaun Murphy used one of Reardon’s cues to win the 2005 World Championship and received guidance from him in 2007.

Reardon was awarded the MBE 1985. He was inducted into the snooker Hall of Fame in 2011, and each year the winner of the Welsh Open is presented with the Ray Reardon Trophy. Throughout the snooker family, he was much loved and highly respected.

The father of two, who married his second wife Carol in 1987, lived for over 40 years in Devon, an area he had got to know through playing exhibitions. After retirement he continued to play snooker socially, as well as golf, becoming President of Churston Golf Club. In 2019 he survived a pulmonary embolism, and continued to approach life with enthusiasm.

In August 2023, in one of his last interviews, Reardon told David Hendon: “I still enjoy playing snooker. Some days you are in a little world of your own, you can pot anything and nothing distracts you. It’s fantastic, magic.”

Main picture: Roger Lee

Article by WST.