Jonny McCambridge: How I managed to misspend my youth without gaining proficiency. It’s snooker loopy

But it seems to me that there is a subtler point of truth in the phrase, a recognition that there is something potentially addictive about the game which could lead an impressionable youth astray. If you wanted to get good at this game then you had to put the hours in, rather than applying yourself to more useful things like homework.

While it might seem hard for a generation bred on video games to understand, I fell hopelessly in love with snooker not long after I started primary school. It was on the telly all the time back then and I became transfixed (I developed a similar relationship with darts).

I got my first miniature table for Christmas when I was very young. A couple of years later I had progressed to a six-foot table which was kept in our hallway. I cannot begin to give an idea of the countless hours I spent battering the balls about trying to master the game. When we moved to a smaller house, the table went into the garage, but the amount of time devoted to the game did not diminish.

Before I was a teenager, I had progressed to playing on full-size tables in snooker halls. I remember well the first time I played on a 12-foot table and how daunted I was by the size (much bigger than it seemed to telly). I had also never played on a slate surface before and was unprepared for the pace. My first shot, to compensate for the larger scale, I walloped and then watched bemused as the white ball bounced up and down the table a dozen times like an oversized pinball machine.

However, I stuck with it. This leads me to a guilty confession. Through my years of secondary education, a fair amount of my time was spent playing snooker in clubs. While it is not something to be proud of (and with apologies to my former teachers) a lot of these matches were played at times when I was supposed to be in school. My co-conspirators and I would turn up at the clubs wearing our uniforms during school hours, but I never remember once being quizzed on why we were there. On one occasion I skipped the school’s house debate to go and play snooker. The fact that I was a member of the debating society made this all the worse.

At around the same time I discovered the game of pool. There were similarities to snooker, but this was a much more accessible game. It was also logistically easier. While proper snooker could only be played in large halls, a pool table could be accommodated within a much smaller venue.

The youth club I went to offered various activities, but I can only remember playing pool there. There was also a pool table in the sixth-year recreational room of my school. While it was there to provide a leisure activity during free periods, it sadly became another temptation to keep me away from classes.

By the time I had become a young adult most of the nights out I attended with my circle of friends began by going to a bar with a pool table. Only after a couple of hours of playing ‘winner stays on’ would we drag ourselves off to Kelly’s nightclub in Portrush.

It might be expected that my progression to professional life would have put an end to all of this nonsense, but it was not quite the case. In one of first newspapers I worked in I discovered one of my colleagues shared my love of pool. Every lunch hour was spent playing in a local club. The hours gradually became longer and longer.

When I got my first job in a daily newspaper, I quickly found there was a snooker hall across the road. I played championship-length matches of first to 18 frames there with one co-worker which went on for weeks.

As soon as one of us reached the required number of frames, we would immediately start all over again.

Now, nearing 50, I watch more snooker than I play. However, every few weeks I meet up with my brother for a game.

When I occasionally catch up with an old friend from my youth, our habit is always to revert back to going for a game of pool or snooker. Maybe it fills the gaps when we can’t think of anything to say to each other.

Which all brings me back to the original quote. A proficiency in snooker is a sure sign of a misspent youth. My love for the game remains undimmed, I don’t regret playing it, but even within my level of fanaticism there is a recognition that at least some of that time and energy could have been more usefully spent. It is easy to be wise in later years, but I perhaps wish that I had focused more on education and less on arguing whether two shots should be allowed to carry in pool.

As for proficiency? Absolutely not a bit of it. Even after playing for more than four decades I remain utterly and completely useless at snooker. I’m not sure I’ve ever compiled a break higher than 20. I am entirely confident that if I had given every moment of my life to the game, I would remain entirely inept. I simply have no aptitude for it.

Which leads to the obvious question, why would anyone devote so much of their life to something they are so clearly bad at? I have no answer for that.