Cue shark having ball keeping kids out of harm | Hawkes Bay Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Hawkes Bay

Dressed up to their eyeballs in tuxedos with poker faces to match, their demeanour is as hard to decipher as the angles of incidence and reflection before the colourful balls corroborate Newton's law of motion to nestle against the cushions of the flawless tables.

Ultimately, when the black ball is sunk after the pockets have gobbled up the myriad coloured ones, a winner emerges. He folds his cue stick immaculately, adjusting his bow tie before receiving his rewards while dodging a cross-fire of repartee from the other pretenders.

Aucklander Henry Killian stood tall on Sunday when the chalk dust settled after he demolished Wellingtonian Harry Haenga 4-0 in the main section of the Heaphy Billiards Hawke's Bay Open Snooker Singles.

But SportToday had a vested interest in a familiar Bay face in the shadows of the dimly-lit Heretaunga Club. A 3-0 victim of Haenga in the quarter-finals, Wyn Belmont these days flies the Auckland flag after he and his family left Napier for the Big Smoke in 2006.

Belmont is refreshingly articulate, his face every so often breaking into an expansive smile as he thoroughly answers questions.

The 52-year-old, wife Maku, son Wayne, 28, and world champion cue sport-playing daughter Ramona, 22, are managing an amusement centre in Glen Eden, Waitakere, for the Tokoroa Pockets Eight-ball Club.

Having established the business, Belmont reveals the plan was always to sell the centre.

"We sold it 18 months ago with more than 2000 members and the money goes back to the sport," he says, stressing they only charge their youth $5 a year in membership.

Regrettably, the responsibility of keeping youth in the straight and narrow in the country's largest metropolitan centre means his game has suffered, but he reconciles that with the immeasurable satisfaction of the returns from his community service.

"I'm not doing it for money, you know. I'm just doing it for aroha. With kids you're always winning," he says, adding his son and daughter, who has won numerous women's national and regional titles in the past few months, also help coach youngsters with him.

Ramona is the top women's seed in snooker/billiards in the country and among the top five in 8-ball and 9-ball (pool) nationally. She's preparing for the International Billiards and Snooker Women's World Snooker Championship in Hyderabad, India, in November. It still rankles him that Ramona had to miss out on the world championships in Ireland because tobacco sponsorship reduced her to just a spectator. Furthermore, hypocritically, the invitation to watch came without provision for a parent to accompany her.
 

Ramona, who as a teenager had a constant reminder on her bedroom ceiling in Napier to win a world title before the age of 21, confronted more pot-holes competing later on purely on a gender basis, but she had her way in Taupo in 2003 when she became the first woman to chalk her cue in the world under-21 championships.

"She can write a book on politics in this sport," says Belmont, who has assumed the mantle of president and executive on different national bodies of cue sports in the country.

Having lived in Wairoa, Gisborne and Napier over the years, Belmont misses the weather here, but not the low-pressure belts of bylaws and landlords who made it difficult for him to establish a business.

Beneath the blanket of the gloomy weather, 1.8 million inhabitants and bumper-to-bumper traffic, Belmont's humorous analogy of "friendlier drivers" there projects rays of hope in a code that is desperate for investment.

"Drivers let you in even at a stop sign because they know one day they will be stuck there too," he says with a laugh, adding the city offers even more activity for those who are "long in the tooth" like him.

The Bay, he believes, is devoid of facilities and quite often stuck in the intolerant 1970-80s mentality.

"They still have the old school thinking of not having kids running around while you're having a beer."

Belmont proudly reflects on his achievements in the Bay, especially his involvement in helping formulate the constitution for the Pukemokimoki Marae in Maraenui, after his input in Wairoa.

In that vein he champions his cause for the New Zealand Junior Snooker Championship he hosted in Glen Eden in July, which lured 11 Bay children.

With co-organiser David Holmes, of Hastings, Belmont hopes to make the it an event that alternates between Auckland and the Bay in the school holidays.

"We're launching it with sponsorship and trophies, so it'll be an interprovincial challenge like the Ranfurly Shield."

Belmont runs a tight ship with the youth, uncompromising when it comes to membership.

"They have to be in school, on a course or working. If they are in the streets then they have a week to get their butts back into school because they aren't getting any free pool here."