HAVE YOU EVER felt completely fed up with snooker after one too many games at the local club on a lazy weekend afternoon? Well imagine how you’d feel after 191 consecutive frames.
No one knew precisely how that felt until recently, when two lads from Ennis improbably set about breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest snooker marathon ever recorded*.
It all started when Gerry O’Loughlin took over a struggling snooker club and conceived of the record attempt as a way of gaining publicity as well as ultimately helping to raise funds for Sláinte an Chláir — a local cancer support centre.
Initially, he doubted that anyone would be crazy enough to even attempt to play over 80 hours of snooker, irrespective of the potential rewards, yet to his amazement, there were plenty of volunteers for the task.
Eventually he settled on truck driver Keiran Ferns and Gordon O’Loughlin (no relation to Gerry), who works in the endoscopy department of Ennis General Hospital. The two are like “chalk and cheese,” Gerry tells TheScore.ie.
“Whereas I have the physical toughness, Keiran has a mental toughness that I couldn’t match really,” Gordon adds.
The duo’s contrasting qualities ultimately worked in their favour however, as they exceeded their target, officially playing 89 hours of snooker or 83 and a half hours of continuous play (they were granted a five-minute break every hour). It meant they stopped playing just before 3am on Tuesday morning, having started at 8am on Friday, meaning they had effectively played four days of snooker, comfortably beating the previous 72-hour Guinness World Record in the process.
Despite claiming he could have “done an extra 10 hours no bother,” Keiran, in particular, enjoyed his sleep afterwards.
“The time we finished was around half two, a quarter to three on Tuesday morning,” he recalls. “I slept until eight o’clock on the Tuesday evening, had a bit of a pizza for about an hour, went to sleep again and didn’t wake up till five o’clock Wednesday morning.”
(Left to right: Gordon O’Loughlin, Gerry O’Loughlin and Keiran Ferns, with family and friends in the background.)
Gerry, especially, was amazed that his two main men had achieved the feat, particularly as they had originally cut short what was intended to be a 50-hour practice run after just 30 hours in the weeks leading up to the main event.
“I am still amazed by their courage and determination to keep going on, when I honestly thought it was over,” he says.
“I did doubt Keiran’s fitness. Gordon would be into his dieting, but Keiran might be more into toasted sandwiches and stuff like that. It worked, but the two guys being complete opposites was funny. They both struggled in different ways, but they’re two tough guys.”
“If I push myself too far, I get burnt out,” Keiran says, explaining why he failed to do the 50-hour test initially. “Gerry told me afterwards he didn’t think I could do it because I didn’t do the 50.”
Keiran even went without one of his main vices, coffee, for much of the challenge. “My first coffee was around eight o’clock Monday evening [during the event]. People before were telling me to drink loads of coffee and Red Bull, but it’d only bring you down after half an hour. I’d be quite fond of coffee and I knew I could drink it that evening, because we were nearly there. It was only another four or five hours.”
Yet notwithstanding these incredibly arduous conditions, Gordon was “flying” for much of the challenge, poignantly explaining: “There’s a woman close to me who has cancer and thinking about her got me through the whole event.”
And though Keiran had problems with his calves and was required to get physio in between shots, it was Gordon who suffered the most and at one stage, it looked as if he simply could not continue.
(Gordon’s father, left, had to make a judgement call on whether his son was fit to continue at one point)
However, having played consecutively for several hours, the duo had racked up a number of five-minute breaks, and took the opportunity to recover extensively.
“On Monday morning, Gordon was so bad he couldn’t hit the ball or focus,” Gerry explains. “Mentally, he was just so tired, even though physically, he was okay. We had some time built up from breaks, so we said we’d let him go to sleep for about 20 minutes. We brought him up and he slept. But when we tried to wake him up, he’d get angry with us.”
Gordon’s condition deteriorated to such an extent that they had to contact his father, who would decide whether he was happy for his son to continue.
“I was pretty worried,” Gerry admits. “Someone knew where his father lived. His father had been at the club all night and had gone to bed. I drove up and his father came down and he came around a bit after that.”
“Gordon wasn’t the same after he slept,” Keiran adds. “When he came down and we were playing the game, he’d take his shot and if he missed, it’d be my shot, but he’d still think it was his shot. He wasn’t tuned in fully. I was roaring at him, saying ‘look Gordon, it’s my shot’. But he just wasn’t in the same frame of mind as us.
“The Monday morning he was writing down stuff on paper for his parents. I was getting worried more for him. I thought ‘Jesus, he’s really gone to God’. He was so dehydrated it was unbelievable.
“None of us had had any coffee. His father kept on giving him loads of water and Jaffa Cakes, and stuff with rakes of sugar just to try to snap him out of it. It took a few bottles of water to bring him around, and his colour started coming back then. It was then only a matter of going until 10 past 12 at night.”
(Gerry [centre] watches on while surrounded by volunteers)
Unsurprisingly, Gordon’s memories of this particularly disconcerting period are hazy at best.
“Come that morning, it was a major issue because I couldn’t distinguish what was real and what wasn’t,” he says.
“I couldn’t actually speak at one stage, I lost my speech. My parents came down and I wrote down a note and gave it to my mother to pass on to Keiran because I couldn’t talk anymore.
“He just kept plugging away and pushing me and telling me ‘c’mon Gordon it’s your shot’. He kept me going through the dark hours. He pumped fluids in me and got loads of sugar into me as well. Come two o’clock in the day on the Monday, there was going to be no stopping us. We never looked back. Physically I never had an issue. None of my muscles ever give in and my body never gives up. But I lost touch with reality in a big way. It’s hard to be staying awake and concentrating all the time.
“But the following day [once the challenge was completed], I was in to work at the hospital at half nine after finishing on the Tuesday morning, so physically I was fine. I’ve done marathons and I’ve hit the wall training and you hit the wall for maybe half an hour. But this one was a mental wall for eight to 12 hours. It’s probably the biggest achievement of my life to get over that.”
The duo’s breaking of the Guinness World Record was ultimately the icing on the cake of what was an enormously successful event. Gerry had sought publicity for his club and he certainly succeeded in that regard. Several businesses donated spot prizes. Legendary Irish snooker player Ken Doherty played an exhibition match as part of the event. Cupcakes resembling snooker balls were created especially for the occasion. The local chip shop provided enough food to “feed half of Ennis”.
(As part of the event, Irish snooker star Ken Doherty participated in an exhibition match)
Moreover, countless media outlets — both local and national — covered proceedings in one form or another, to the extent that it would be fair to say the achievement is now the talk of the town. There was even a live web cam set up largely for the benefit of those watching from overseas, and it ended up crashing owing to excessive viewing figures.
Gerry says he is hugely grateful to the various volunteers who aided the initiative, whether it was the individual who double-checked that the time was being kept accurately, or the person who spent a considerable period of time telling jokes to ensure all in attendance were regularly entertained.
“To see the support was incredible. I’ve been involved in many great things in my life, but this has to be up there. It’s some achievement.”
And at the heart of it were two individuals competing for a good cause, who were hellbent on prevailing no matter what happened.
“As Keiran will tell you, the two of us made a pact,” Gordon concludes. “Apart from winning, the only way we’d leave was in a box.”
For more info on the event, check out the Ennis Snooker and Pool Club Facebook page.
To find out more about Sláinte an Chláir, click here to visit their official website.
*pending confirmation
All pics used with permission from Gordon O’Loughlin
