Mercury Bay Club Snooker.
By Pauline Stewart.
The Mercury Bay Snooker Club is a popular activity at Mercury Bay Club. Their facility offers three snooker tables, four pool tables and one pool table for kids in a very open area, separate from the dining and entertainment. On weekends there is quite a buzz around these tables.
There’s room for the very experienced through to the beginners.When The Informer dropped in, all the tables were busy. The oldest player is 85 and last Saturday, a twelve-year-old was forming up his skill playing his grandfather. The snooker and pool players are keen to welcome other players to join them.
Eight Ball Challenge Tournament
- Cooks Beach and Mercury Bay Club are even.
The winner to claim two of the three tournaments between the two clubs wins the trophy for the year.
The tournament is a very friendly affair. The Mercury Bay team picked up their Cooks Beach opponents at the ferry and took them to Mercury Bay Club. There was drink and food and games of singles and doubles, and finally it was down to the last game. The competition began at 10.30am and finished around 4.00pm. This last game was two players - Ken Martin (MB) and Tania Piper (Cooks Beach). It was such a narrow margin win by Ken with Mercury Bay winning 16 to 14 against the Cooks Beach Club. Each club has won one tournament and the claim on the trophy for 2023 will be decided at the next tournament later this year. The organisers at Mercury Bay end, Doug Pascoe and Kylie Kahotea-Moses felt it was a very successful day.
This is no ordinary trophy - a beautifully crafted wooden box in which is mounted a bottle encasing a miniature of Captain Cooks Ship, The Endeavour. The box was adapted by a local craftsman to enable space for winner’s shields; and Cooks Beach members, Graham Robinson and Max Castle assisted with the bottle and ship, the brass additions and engraving, and the first engraved shield.
Caption: Mercury Bay team: Back row - Baz Russell, Gavin Sullivan, Mike Fraser, Jon
Murray. Front row - Alan Wallace, Steve Billman, Roger Smith, Doug Pascoe (holding trophy),
Ken Martin, Brent Smith, Richie Neighbours. Front - Kylie Kahotea-Moses.