Personalities In N.Z. Sport

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 779, 27 September 1929, Page 12

Personalities In N.Z. Sport

Billiards Champion, All-Round Athlete

OX four occasions amateur billiards champion of New Zealand, and seven times Auckland provincial amateur billiards title-holder. E. V. (“Cock”) Roberts, Auckland’s brilliant exponent of the ehalked-eue game has also had a distinguished career as a representative cricketer, Soccer footballer and all-round athlete.

lie was born in Xorth Wales, and spent his early years at Southport, Lancashire, before coming to New Zealand as a lad of 16 in 1903. He has been playing billiards for 23 years, and such was his keenness for the gamo in his young days that when staying with an uncle at Birkenhead, where ho was forbidden to play the game, he had to resort to the ruse of getting up in the midnight hours and invading the billiard-room to handle the fascinating cue. Roberts did not take the game up seriously in Auckland till after the war. In 1919 he played in his first New Zealand championship tourney and was outed by Seidberg. He won the New Zealand championship in 1922, 1923. 1926 and 1927. H is seven wins in the Auckland title tourneys were secured in 1919, 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1928 and in 1929, when a week or so ago he defeated the New Zealand titleholder, E. Bowie, in the final of the Auckland event. "With four wins to his credit, he won outright the Auckland Amateur Billiards Cup, and now holds for one year Messrs. Billiards Limited shield, which was presented in the stead of the cup in 1924. Tho medals and trophies he has won at different times during his career with tho cue run into dozens. He has hopes, if he can regain the New Zealand championship, that he will be sent to Australia in 1931 to the amateur championship tourney of the British Empire, the title of which is at present held by Hayes, the Australian. SOCCER REP As the Auckland title holder, he will most likely represent the Auckland Province at the 1929 New Zealand championships at Wellington on October 22. His best break in the New Zealand championships was 140, and his best on the standard table 189. although he

has gone up to. 248 on other tables. As a Soccer player he represented Auckland almost continuously from 1913 till 1922. and coached “Ces” Dacre and “Bob” Innes at the game. 1-Te also played League during the war in 1916, 1917. and 1918 for the Ponsonby, Maritime and North Shore clubs. After the war he came back to Soccer and again represented the province. He played for the Ponsonby Club in 1909, and has since represented the Corinthian and Everton clubs. He has been Ponsonby’s delegate to the A.F.A. for a number of years, and was this year elected a member of the Control Board of "the Auckland Football Association. At cricket he played for the Ponsonby Club in the Auckland Cricket Association’s .senior competition for a number of years, and together with Mr. J. F. W. Dickson and others founded the Ponsonby Club, which at present competes in the Auckland City Lind Suburban Association’s competitions. ALL-ROUND CRICKETER As an all-rounder—bowler,bats-man, fieldsman and wicket-keeper —he has played for the Auckland City and Suburban representatives on several occasions, lie has had a unique career as an athlete, having played pretty well every sport there is at some time or other. In his younger days he shone at athletics, and before coming to New Zealand donned the boxing gloves in England. Roberts can recall one of his first billiards matches, when at school in England. To start with, a mate gave him 20 in 30, but by the end of the week, the handicapping had been reversed. On the Soccer field he played right fullback, and when a devotee of the League game he took up the last line of defence. He was a member of the Auckland eleven which went to Wellington in 1921 and brought back the Brown Shield, then emblem of Dominion inter-provincial Soccer supremacy. CRICKET STALWART Mr. C. G. "Wilson, who for many years occupied the post of chairman of the Management Committee of the Wellington Cricket Association, was this week added to the select band of life members of the association. It was also decided to present gold medals to its life members and three were presented at the meeting, the recipients being Messrs. M. F. Luckie, C. E. Stevens and W. R. Bock.