MACAN’S SNOOKER POOL
Andy Macan had for reasons best known to himself built a new house, and had filled it with his family and friends. I mention this because, in the first place, when you start a story you have to mention something, and, in the next place, because a good many of his family were not his friends, which is not a peculiar state of affairs, but which was a fact that Macan more or less had to face.
But as Andy remarked, “There’s nothing a new house wants so badly as warming,” and certainly if the gentlemen who assembled in the building only could play up to their previous reputations they were well able to heat up any establishment. They had wandered through the house and discussed whisky and other architectural improvements.
“I never yet saw a finer house, Andy,” said Dominic Daly; “but you have some useless accoutrements in the shape of bath rooms. They are no more use to a house than a pair of drawers to a turkey cock. Isn’t the lake there for you? And you will find as many bathrooms in that—without spending a penny on building them—as would wash the Macans from this to judgment day. You always had a taste for machinery.”
“There’s many a good Irishman who only trusted to Providence for his shower bath, and I never saw the plumber yet who could do better for washing than the clouds above us.”
This was the opinion of Jeremiah Jackson, J.P. But if the water arrangements were voted superfluous, the vintages of Ireland, France, and Spain were sampled and voted the best by the assembled company, until at last the time came to open the new billiard-room. This was indeed a rural feature which had not been noted in any house in the county before. The billiard table and cues wore the best Dublin could supply, and the chairs and seats were comfortable, and strong as it was necessary they should be for Irish recreation.
“We shall open with a game of snooker pool,” said Macan. “There are the rules hung on the wall; but those rules were made in England, and ate no more use than if they were made in Germany, or elsewhere. We make our own rules, boys, and we make them as we go along. It’s Home Rule snooker, and we arc the boys who will put a touch of College Green into it.”
Needless to say, these sentiments were received with boundless enthusiasm, and for fear of accidents the framed and printed instructions of Messrs. Burroughs and Watts were thrown out of the window, and then four players started the game. These were Charlie Carter, Dick Cornyn, George Burke, and Billy O’Callaghan, with Andy Macan as general director. “You play on a red ball first,” said Andy, “then on any ball that isn’t red, then on red again, and so on. Skelp away, Charlie,” And Charlie, nothing loth, skelped, and skelped to some purpose, for he hit the pink ball and sent the red balls flying into every part of the table.
“That’s six against you, Charlie,” cries Andy. “Against who?”
“Against you. You hit the pink, not the red.”
“The pink! To be sure. Why not?”
“Well, it isn’t the rule.”
“It isn’t the Saxon rule; but we’re not going to suffer from Saxon rule. (Great cheering.) Put that down as the first rule in Macan’s snooker pool.”
And so the game went on.
“What ball are you playing at, Dick?” asked the owner.
“The one I am going to hit,” said Dick, missing his cue and hitting a ball beside him.
“Foul stroke,” cries Billy O’Callaghan.
“It’s a devilish fine stroke, Billy; and to the dickens with you and your fouls.”
“Four against you, Dick,” cries Andy.
“Saxon rule,” shouts Dick with defiance.
“We are playing Andy Macan’s game.” Just at this stage Sir John Flaherty advanced with faltering steps to the table.
“Count the balls,” he said; “someone is cheating. There are only thirty-six on the table.”
“Sit down, you old ass” (from the room generally), and Sir John, mumbling something about “undoubted cheating,” was led back to his seat. The only difficulty which remained was the score. The different value of the balls was always more or less a matter of argument, and Andy discovered that although from a personal and patriotic point of view he had done a fine thing in starting new rules for the game, still, if a definite issue was ever to be arrived at, it would be well to take such of the printed rules as would bring about that result, and so the shattered remains of the discarded rules were retrieved from the gravel sweep not a moment too soon, for Dick had cut the cloth and hit Sir John Flaherty with the black ball in the stomach, and no one knew how much this counted for anybody. Then began the counting up the cost.
The amount owing to or won by each player had to be settled. And here again it was unanimously decided that compound addition should not be included in Macan’s rules for snooker pool. This led to much heated argument, which was only settled by the supper announcement and the removal of all balls from the various pockets. Sir John Flaherty made one more final demand that the balls should be counted, and wound up with an intimation that a friend of his would call on anybody who wanted to see him the next morning. Finally Dominic Daly pronounced his opinion that “the curse of this game was the rules. If the game was not bothered with rules it would not be a bad game, and certainly it should count nothing to go in off anything.” It may be said that the rules of Burroughs and Watts are once more hung in Andy’s billiard-room, and the Macan rules, having apparently died of the bouse warming, have been seen or heard of no more.
Ballyhooly.
Sporting Times, Saturday 25 January 1902