Until now.

Sawtell RSL’s Stuart Bowers was crowned tournament king on the weekend in the knockout comp that always draws in talent from up and down the east coast of Australia, including more than one national champion.

In fact, this year’s 30^th anniversary tournament was a boon for the Mid North Coast, with Macksville Ex-Servies’s own Terry Jennar earning the silver, and the highest break guernsey.

The win came as a happy surprise for Stuart, who’s come back into the fray in the last three months after a hip replacement caused him to put the brakes on his life.

“There were some pretty great players coming into a local field,” he said.

But the two-times Queensland State Finalist calmly out-potted the 30-or-so other players that entered, winning the quarter finals 2-0, the semis 3-1 and the finals 4-1.

Stuart says the final against Terry Jennar was tighter than the scoreline belies.

“I feel like I potted the clutch shots at the moments I needed to,” he said.

“But at a high level it’s about forcing the other player to make mistakes – it’s a kind of mental warfare.

“It doesn’t matter how good your technique is, some people just have a better mental strategy – more steel in their fibre.”

Stuart first picked up the game in Sydney at age 13 but, as teenage hormones set in, the idea of darkened snooker halls in Western Sydney wasn’t very appealing.

He returned to the sport a couple of decades later and took to it like a duck to water.

“At age 30 I well-and-truly caught the bug. It really can get into your blood, you know,” he said.

“And my goal at that time, like most serious players, was to make a 100-point break.”

Watch as Snooker Stu shows how it’s done.

Stuart, like many other local players, is keen to see the standard lift in the area. 

He said the Mid North Coast players are often at a disadvantage without the numbers to hold a weekly competition, and laments that there are few youngsters keen to pick it up.

He also said it’s been hard to to find a sparring partner.

“When you’re training for a tournament especially, a practise partner can really help to sharpen you,” he said.

So Stuart is committed to turning the tide of his sport in the region and is hard at work coaching initiates, including a young refugee gentleman.

He’s also been coaching a man in his sixties who’s new to the game, proving it’s a game for all ages, he said.

Stuart was full of praise for the staff at the Macksville Ex-Services Club who he says proved to be the pinnacle of good old country hospitality.

And his eyes glint as he recalls with amusement a rowdy heckler who had to bribe the ref with a beer in order to remain a spectator.

He laments the loss of the snooker tables in Coffs Harbour, where he lives, but he’s happy that the Nambucca is steadfastly keeping the sport alive in the region.

With two out of the four remaining sets of snooker tables on the Mid North Coast located right here in our shire, there’s every chance we’ll be seeing a Nambucca Valley national champ in the near future.