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Re: The Passing of Another Champion
Master of perfection
By John Huxley - Sydnet Morning Herald
November 9, 2004
Of all the many millions of snooker shots played by Eddie Charlton during a career spanning almost 70 years, the most spectacular was probably that performed for a small television audience at Tattersalls Club in Sydney, one winter's evening in 1980.
In a nervous silence, Charlton aimed a white cue ball at a coloured ball that was resting on a piece of chalk held between the lips of a woman lying flat on the green baize table.
Such was the accuracy and velocity of his shot that the coloured ball popped out and trickled into a bottom corner pocket, while the cue ball rolled down the woman's cheek and came to rest between her shoulder and the top cushion.
How many times Charlton practised that trick shot is not recorded, but it would have been unimaginable for ordinary "hit and hope", club players.
For "Steady" Eddie Charlton - who died yesterday, aged 75, in New Zealand where he had been fulfilling a number of speaking and playing engagements - believed that practice made perfect. And, as friend and fellow professional, Joe Minici, recalls, he was the ultimate perfectionist.
Throughout his career, he was totally dedicated, totally self-disciplined - even during practice, he did not like people talking," said Minici, the current snooker professional at Tattersalls and Australia's fourth-ranked player.
Indeed, it is not for his flash shots and flamboyance but for his phlegmatic, seemingly nerveless style that Charlton - a three-time runner-up in the world championship and three-time winner of the Pot Black title in Britain - will be best remembered.
"Every time I look at a ball, it's in the pocket," he once said, before cheerfully explaining that his super-confidence was something of a facade. "People say I have nerves of steel. It makes me laugh. I get as nervous as a cat."
Charlton embraced the game during childhood, playing at his grandfather's pool hall in Swansea from the age of eight and was soon taking on all comers.
Despite his early start, he was a late entrant into the professional ranks of the game. Indeed, he worked for more than 20 years in the local mines, fixing burst pipes and faulty pumps, before breaking on to the world scene at the age of 37.
Ian Anderson, president of the World Pool-Billiard Association, said last night, "Eddie was still actively playing the game he had loved for so long right to the end." Though his international career was over, he continued to compete in the Tattersalls Club snooker handicap.
Charlton won the competition in 1988, was runner up in 1998 and, Minici explained, only three years ago compiled a break of 139, including 14 blacks and 14 reds (the maximum, perfect score is 147).
"To do that at any age is great," says Minici. "But to do that at 72 it just remarkable."
Charlton is survived by five children and eight grandchildren.
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