Kate Hawkesby

Does money make a difference in playing snooker?

We'll find out.

Wayne O'Donnell is the president of Hawke's Bay Confederation of Billiard Sports and is with us.

Wayne, morning.

Morning, Mike.

What would you say is the state of the game in your particular part of the world?

Well, it's grown quite a lot over the last two years.

The association itself had been in a bit of a lull.

It started off when I took over as treasurer originally with a past president.

In the last two years, we've grown that to around about 58.

Basically by promoting the sport and bringing in new players

new sorts of games.

So we started what we call a one-framer series here in the Bay, put it out amongst all the local clubs, the RSAs, quasi-clubs, et cetera, and had a really good response to it.

Is that prize money, is that a thing in terms of, I mean, if you enter, you enter.

I mean, the prize is a secondary.

Does a decent prize pot bring people to town?

Prize money does help quite a bit.

Last year, for example, we had the number one in New Zealand come in, Mark Canavan from South Island.

He also pulled in a lot of top-ranking players for us and sort of established us on the market.

Money does help, but yeah.