Former pool champion Hazel back at scene of her greatest triumphs

Hazel Dabrowski was crowned English champion in 1984 when the inaugural championships was staged at the Tower Ballroom, in Blackpool.

A resident of Abingdon – a historic market town in Oxfordshire – Dabrowski’s love affair with the Fylde coast continued a couple of years later when she repeated her success on the green baize.

To mark the four decades since she became the nation’s first ever ladies’ champion, she was invited to take part in this year’s championship.

Now held at Norbreck Castle Hotel, Dabrowski showed that she is still a force to be reckoned with at the grand old age of 64, reaching the quarter-finals before bowing out.

"Competing in this year’s competition did bring back memories,” said Dabrowski. “It did feel a lot different though because the event was held at a different place.

"I still play a lot now, I play in four pool leagues and still play for my county. I am on two Tours this year and will be on three next year. I am still very active and very competitive.

“But going back to the 1980s, I was the first ever winner of the competition in 1984 when I was 24.

"The year after I was runner-up and then I won it again in 1986.”

Her success in the mid-1980s confirmed her as one of the elite female pool players in the country – and she went on to represent England at the European Championships, in Austria, in 1985, claiming a super silver medal.

And in Germany two years later, she scooped a bronze medal.

"After winning the nationals in 1984, I was invited to go to Austria to compete in the European Championships 1985,” she said.

"Back in England in the 1970s and 1980s, pool was still quite a new game.

"In Austria, they had the big American-style tables with bigger balls. You need a cue with a bigger tip – I just had an old Jimmy White cue which my friend rebuilt by putting lead in it to make it heavier.

"I went on a 25-hour coach journey, I was given a couple of games to learn how to play on the bigger tables, watched a few of the other players and then somehow won a silver medal.

"I remember I was playing a girl from the Netherlands and she was 8-5 up against me, bit I came back to win 9-8. I was very good at tactics.”

When England formed a national team in the 1990s, Dabrowski also featured in international matches – and was a staple of the national squad for much late of the late 1990s and into the noughties.

She has been a frequent visitor to Blackpool over the years, and appeared in the Blackpool Gazette earlier this year when her life was saved after she choked on a piece of food while attending the World Pool Championships at the Grand Hotel.