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43 years ago the first ever UK Championship was held at the Tower Circus in Blackpool and won by a 26-year-old Irishman who looked likely to become one of the stars of the growing sport. A car crash ended Patsy Fagan’s time at the very top, but set him on another path that led him away from snooker then back to the game he loves.
Fagan picked up £2,000 for winning the first edition of the event, exactly 100-times less than the champion will be awarded this year.
It was an exciting time for the sport as new blood was being injected into the professional ranks and it was no longer the closed shop, run by the likes of Joe and Fred Davis, who had decided who was deemed suitable to be a pro and who wasn’t.
Having moved to London from Dublin at the age of 16 to pursue his snooker dreams, Fagan had been forced to compete in the murkier world of the money match, but having finally been allowed to go pro in 1976, he was ready to take on the world and conquer this shiny new tournament.
‘At the time it was cast as the second biggest tournament,’ Fagan told Metro.co.uk. ‘The World Championship, of course was number one and the UK Championship was number two, so it was always a big one. I played Jackie Rea in the first round, Fred Davis, Jim Meadowcraft then [John] Virgo and [Doug] Mountjoy in the final.’
The victory over the Welshman in the final was Fagan’s breakthrough after just a year as a pro, but it was not entirely unexpected for the Irishman.
‘Oh, I was really good,’ he explained. ‘They stopped me turning pro for a few years, I’d been trying to turn pro for a while but it was very closed up then, very hard to get in.
‘They let Willie Thorne in because they wanted someone new for Pot Black and they thought Willie was a nice fella, then it opened up a bit after that, Virgo, myself, Mountjoy and a few others got in. But we were very good.
‘In ’75 and ’76 I was playing with Alex Higgins, John Spencer, Willie Thorne and Mountjoy, but there were not many tournaments at the time. There were a lot of money matches, I played a lot of those.
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‘They’d be arranged, someone would give you a call, say, “do you fancy a game for a few thousand?” Mostly it was the same sort of people who were interested in it.
‘You’d tend to get matches with people at your level, but I was playing anybody, I didn’t care who it was. I thought I could play with anyone at the time.
‘I played Alex for a lot of money, but it was never too risky. I don’t think playing them money matches did me any favours in respect of turning pro. People like Fred and Joe Davis, Rex Williams, they frowned on those sort of things. It was sort of a gentleman’s club. It’s opened up now, if you’re good enough you turn pro. They wouldn’t tell you why, you just got refused and told to re-apply again.
‘There were a lot of write-ups at the time about me not being able to turn pro. People were saying to let these players in and once we got in we were really good, better than most of the players that were there.
‘Me, Mountjoy, Virgo, people like that, we started winning straight away. I won in the UK 77, who won it after that? Mountjoy. Who won it after that? Virgo. So they were top players, well capable and they should have been allowed to turn pro earlier, but there we go.
‘You can imagine what it was like, it was that gentleman’s club of Joe Davis, Fred Davis, Rex Williams, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, they were trying to protect what they had I suppose, but it’s much better now, much fairer.’
The victory in Blackpool immediately opened doors as Fagan was placed into a forerunner for today’s Champion of Champions event, the Dry Blackthorn Cup, which he won less than a month after UK glory.
‘It was very good, it got me recognition straight away then I got invited to the Dry Blackthorn Cup at the Wembley Conference Centre,’ he said.
‘The four champions, Higgins was the Irish champion, [Ray] Reardon the Welsh champion and Spencer was the world champion. I played Spencer in the morning, beat him, then beat Alex in the evening in the final.
‘That was good, a packed out old Wembley Conference Centre, that was very good. Alex and Spencer, both gone, God bless them, but there we go, we can’t live forever can we?’
After those two huge triumphs, Fagan was undoubtedly one of the finest players in the world and no one would have expected that the 26-year-old had just picked up his last significant trophy.
A car crash in 1980 saw Patsy escape with few physical injuries, but with mental scars that devastated his game and saw him give it up entirely during snooker’s boom years of the mid-1980s.
‘I would have expected to do a lot better after the Blackthorn,’ Fagan said. ‘I got the yips with the rest after the car crash and everything got a bit edgy, I just wasn’t as good after that.
‘I played on for a few years from ’80-’85 but I just wasn’t as good, couldn’t use the rest properly and it was very difficult. You can’t have any weaknesses really at the top level, you’ve got to be very good in all departments.
‘I was going down to get the ferry down in Portsmouth, a lorry came out in front of me and I went straight into him. I was crossing the dual carriageway and he mustn’t have seen me. It was a bit of a mess.
‘Injuries weren’t too bad, just bruising, some cuts, I was really lucky, it was 60-70mph, the car was a hell of a mess but I was okay. It shook up the old system though, I was never quite as relaxed as I was, just not the same.
‘I didn’t play for a long time, I stopped for about 16 years. I went and worked for Royal Mail, I wasn’t doing anything, got the game right out of my head. Royal Mail gave me a nice job, they said “we expect you’ll be here for about three months then be back to the snooker” and I was with them for 15 years. It was quite nice, quite enjoyable.’
Fagan’s snooker hiatus was eventually ended as he got the playing bug back and his partner Janette, daughter of legendary snooker figure Ron Gross, suggested a bit of coaching.
Patsy would work with, among others, fellow London resident Alfie Burden and also spend some time with Ronnie O’Sullivan, imparting his knowledge.
‘I fancied playing a bit of snooker and I started coaching Alfie Burden,’ Patsy said. ‘Janette, we’ve been together about 15 years now, she got me back into the coaching and got me playing a bit.
‘I was just playing in a league with people who couldn’t really play but if I put a bit of effort and practice in I could play to a reasonably decent standard.
‘I play a bit of snooker in the Seniors. not too much, I just pick when to play. The Seniors tour has got quite big now, but I think the age is a little bit young. It’s over 40s, which, to me, is not really seniors. I’m old enough to be most of their fathers, I’m 70 in January. I’d say over 50 would be about right.
‘There’s a Super Seniors as well that’s over 55. I’d be one of the best players in that. The other one is quite tough, because a lot of players are just off tour or even on tour if you’re outside the top 64 and they’ll be quite good players.’
Fagan and O’Sullivan were brought together briefly thanks to their mutual friend Jimmy White. When the Rocket needed some help, the Whirlwind knew who to call, demonstrating the standing the Irishman holds in the game.
‘Jimmy phoned me up, I’m very good friends with Jimmy and I’d done a bit of work with him at that time as well,’ Patsy explained. ‘Ronnie had said to Jimmy that he wasn’t happy with his game, there was something wrong as he was getting ready for the World Championship in 2011.
‘Jimmy said, “get Patsy up to help you for a couple of days.” Jimmy rang me. so I popped up to Sheffield.
‘He won it in 2012 and ’13 so I couldn’t have done him any harm, let’s put it like that.’
Having been around snooker for over 50 years, Fagan has seen countless players come and go, but the Rocket stands above all of them, for now…
‘Oh yeah, he’s the best player I’ve ever seen,’ Fagan said of the world champ. ‘I’ve been involved in snooker for a long time and I’ve never seen anyone as good as him.
‘[Judd] Trump, though, you never know, he’s a brilliant player. Will he do the things Ronnie has done? It’s hard to think he would exceed that but it is possible, he’s got maybe 15 years or so to do that. It is possible.
‘I can see O’Sullivan playing for another five to seven years at this level, he’s so good.
‘He has to keep practicing, if you don’t practice you’ll go downhill, simple as that. But if he keeps the practice up he can keep going till he’s 50. The same with [Mark] Williams and [John] Higgins, it’s just if they can keep themselves interested and keep that want to win, that desire that gets them to the practice table for three or four hours. If they’ve got that, you can’t see them not doing well for the next five years.’
O’Sullivan, Williams and Higgins will all be vying for the 2020 UK Championship over the next two weeks, a tournament that Fagan believes still holds the lustre it always has, despite the changes of format in recent years.
‘I don’t think it has lost anything, no,’ Fagan said of the event he won 43 years ago. ‘They’ve knocked it back a bit to third place after the Masters, but I don’t think that should be the case because the Masters is not open to all the players, just the top 16.
‘Okay you’ve got to earn the right to be there, but anyone can go in the UK and it’s much harder to win the UK than the Masters. All the top players are there and out to win it. The prize money is very big as well.
‘They have cut it down frame-wise, but really it’s only the World Championship with a lot of frames and they were even thinking about cutting that down. That would have been wrong, I think. It’s got to be a big test to be the world champion. You’re always going to get the great players winning that.
‘The UK, okay it’s been cut down a bit, but it’s still a good test, the final is longer and best of 11 is not that short. You’ve got to play well to win. If you’re playing Judd Trump you’ve got to play well to win six frames.’
As Fagan’s crowning achievement in snooker, you might expect that the UK Championship trophy holds pride of place at his home in Ruislip, but in fact, he is not even sure where it is anymore.
Patsy has an idea about that one, but admits the whereabouts of the giant Dry Blackthorn Cup is a complete mystery.
‘No I haven’t got them,’ he said. ‘I don’t have no trophies, never keep anything really. Janette keeps everything.
‘I think Steve Davis has got the UK trophy. I think it went back and Steve Davis won it three times in a row and kept it. I gave it back to World Snooker, I think.
‘I kept the Dry Blackthorn one, I think my first wife might have it, I don’t know where the hell it is.’
Janette explains: ‘Patsy has been married three times and I’ve been to three of his weddings! I think when he’s left his wives, things get lost.’
‘That was a very big trophy,’ said Patsy. ‘But Blackthorn never came and did another one. I had it for years, but I’ve not seen it for 30-odd years now. It’s probably worth a few quid, but I’m not bothered about it.’
Having got his love of the game back, Fagan is an avid watcher of the sport but is now just looking forward to getting back into the thick of things at clubs and tournaments around the country.
Like for so many others, coronavirus has kept Patsy indoors for the majority of the year and he is raring to get back to the game he loves.
‘I watch probably 80% of tournaments, I still watch a lot of snooker. I love it, it’s great, I never get tired of watching good players play,’ he said. ‘The standard is absolutely terrific, number 100 in the world is probably a hell of a good player.
‘I’ve been stuck inside for most of this, it’s terrible. I got to get back out and start practicing for a couple of weeks, but then had to get back inside.
‘I just hope we can get over this thing, get out and about and do a few things because I like to be out and about.’
A much-loved and well-respected figure on the snooker scene, many will too be hoping to see the first ever UK champion back where he belongs once again.
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