Profile: Ray Reardon

Name: Ray Reardon

Nationality: Welsh (Born in Tredegar, Gwent)

Age: 77 (DOB: 08/10/1932)

Professional: 1967-1992

Highest Ranking: 1 (1976-1983 & 1982/83)

Career highlights: World champion 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978, Masters champion 1976, Pot Black champion 1969, 1979, World Cup team winner 1979, 1980.

Welshman Ray Reardon, along with Alex Higgins and John Spencer, led snooker into its golden age in the 1970’s – but life wasn’t always so easy.

Reardon began life as a miner, following his father into the pits at the age of 14, but, already interested in snooker, protected his hands while down the mine by wearing gloves.

In 1949, he won the News of the World amateur title before claiming the first of six consecutive Welsh amateur championships 12 months later.

The closure of the Tredegar mine in the mid-1950s forced the Reardon family to move to Stoke-on-Trent and, after a mining accident in 1957, Reardon joined the police force.

But he turned professional in 1967 when snooker was at its lowest ebb and, having spent the summer of 1970 playing exhibition matches at a Pontin’s holiday camp, won the first of six World Championship titles.

Reardon - a deadly long potter and master tactician who brought an element of humour and entertainment to his game - forced snooker into the public eye, along with Higgins and Spencer, and television coverage and prize money increased dramatically during his time at the table.

Reardon, now 77, won the first edition of Pot Black, the one-frame weekly series, and his final world title when the event found a new home at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre in 1978.

Best Moment: Having been knocked out of the 1977 World Championship quarter-finals as top seed by eventual winner Spencer, Reardon, seemingly a spent force, returned 12 months later to turn back the clock and win his sixth world title with victory over South African Perrie Mans.

Worst Moment: Reardon suffered a brush with death in 1957 when he was buried alive for three hours in a mining accident at the Florence Colliery in Stoke-on-Trent. That was enough to convince Reardon to join the police force and he dropped out of the game for a few years before returning to win the English Amateur Championship in 1964.

Reardon’s last final was at the 1985 World Doubles, where he partnered Tony Jones, and he was awarded an MBE in the same year.

Reardon retired in 1992 having been plagued by eye problems in the latter stages of his career but maintains an active interest in the game and mentored Ronnie O’Sullivan, giving The Rocket psychological and technical advice on the way to his second world championship triumph in 2004.

As a professional, Reardon became the first snooker player to appear on 'This Is Your Life' and in 1979 he was Roy Plomley’s guest on 'Desert Island Discs'. He has since appeared on 'Parkinson' and 'A Question of Sport'.

Reardon, who now lives in Torquay, is currently president of Churston Golf Club and is the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association’s chairman of coaching.