The collection custodian hopes the cups will be preserved for posterity
A collection of trophies that once represented a huge part of sports club life in Hull and “too beautiful to scrap” has hopefully been saved from the melting pot. The cups for snooker and billiards, some dating back more than 100 years, were transferred to custodian Ian Greaves, of west Hull, when their caretaker moved away from the area.
Ian, a long-time employee and snooker columnist for the Hull Daily Mail, said: “I had a wonderful few years covering our local players playing in amateur tournaments across the country and even running our Hull Daily Mail snooker tournament with Malcolm Acaster – who was the only player to hold the Yorkshire champion and the Yorkshire Handicap titles at the same time.
“For a number of years I wrote a snooker column in the Mail, alongside Malcolm. He recently moved away from the area and he asked me to take care of some of the snooker trophies from, mainly, the Independent snooker league.”
Ian said: “A couple of them have silver hallmarks on them and are too beautiful to just scrap or discard. Of course the real value is in the historical links to the sport of billiards and the more recent snooker in Hull.”
Ian’s own involvement comes from covering all the local leagues – Independent, 16 divisions of 12 teams each; Works Sport, six divisions; North Humberside, eight divisions; Beverley, four divisions and also the Grimsby and Lincs leagues. He said: “I’m really attached to this memorabilia, as I recognise many of the winners’ names, but I am just a custodian.”
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The trophies concerned include the Moors and Robson’s Breweries Ltd trophy, dating from 1922, competed for in the snooker section of the Hull and District Independent Billiards and Snooker League. There is also the 1924 Albert Cup, a billiards handicap cup.
Ian has listed as many names of the cup winners as possible, the years and the clubs they represented. The clubs include Lambton, Eureka, Monica, Charleston, Trinity, Clarence, Skirlaugh, Unity, Ironworkers, Adelaide and Brunswick.
Ian believed, with the decline in the number of snooker clubs locally, there might not be “much of an appetite to hold obscure historical artefacts”. He has approached Hull History Centre about the trophies and his endeavours to find a permanent home for them has also led him to local author and historian Paul Gibson, who runs a Hull and East Yorkshire history website.
Ian said: “It would be a shame just to scrap them after all these years.” Paul, a snooker player himself, has agreed to look after the cups until a suitable home can be found for them, if at all possible.
He told Ian: “I fully understand your feelings. I also feel that it would be a shame for these beautiful items to be left in some store room with no one able to view them.”
Paul said: “I’ll do my very best with the local history contacts that I have.” The trophies include:
- Hull and District Independent Billiards and Snooker League, Snooker Section, Moors & Robson’s Breweries Ltd – 1922
- Hull Independent (Winter) Snooker League, Railway Club, Snooker Cup
- Hull and District Independent Billiards and Sports League, Albert Cup – 1924, Billiards Handicap Cup
- Hull Independent Snooker Championship, Stan Dyble Trophy
- Hull Independent Billiards and Sports League, E. J. Riley Ltd, Snooker Knockout Cup
If anyone can offer any more suggestions as to where the trophies should best reside, drop us a line at news@hulldailymail.co.uk