Winning a World Championship is the most desired accomplishment any snooker player in the world would love to achieve. Being recognized as a World snooker champion is an honour, a thing you can always say you did, and cannot (or should not in this case) be taken away from a player. This post will be about Horace Lindrum, an Australian born snooker and Billiard player.
History is history and should not be distorted to suit particular interests and today I’m going to talk about a piece of history that’s been forgotten, if not ignored.
I’m sure most snooker fans will know about Neil Robertson winning the World championships in 2010 as he much deserved that year. The problem is that Neil has been acclaimed by World Snooker, the media and commentators as being the first Aussie to win the World Championships and a ranking event title. But this is not quite accurate as I’m about to explain.
In 1952 an Australian by the name of Horace Lindrum technically and officially won the World Championships by beating Clark McConachy in a best of 145 frames by 73-37. Now the controversy around this arises because only these two players played in the 1952 World Championship because it was boycotted by the British players due to a dispute between themselves and the governing snooker body.
The governing body did however let the championships commence with only Lindrum and McConachy so therefore he ‘officially won’ the World title.
People nowadays, including world snooker discount his win and do not credit him with the World Championships, hence why Neil Robertson is accredited as the ‘first Australian’ world champion which I cannot accept as an accurate piece of history.
Below is an extract from the World snooker website on Neil Robertson’s profile which i found today.
The highlight of his career so far came in 2010 when he made snooker history by becoming the first Australian to win the World Championship title, and only the third non-British player, after Cliff Thorburn and Ken Doherty, to lift the famous trophy. He overcame a gritty Graeme Dott in the final to claim an 18-13 victory.
The question is, is this accurate from World Snooker?
So even the official body of snooker ignores Lindrum’s win, even though the governing body at the time sanctioned the tournament and Lindrum did lift the trophy. The reason his win is ignored by the officials is because of the boycott which i don’t feel is quite right and hardly a good enough reason to discount his win as nothing.
For me, it doesn’t matter if there are 128 players in a tournament or two as long as its within the governing body’s (at the time) rules. Therefore Horace Lindrum should be (in my opinion) fully accredited with being the first Australian to lift the World title despite ignorance to ignore his achievement.
Although Horace died in 1974, I personally would like to recognize him as a former World Champion of the sport and not let him, his achievements and his memories get forgotten even if others do.
