Frank Callan

Frank Callan
birthday	1920s
date of death	January 28, 2016
Place of death	Fleetwood
nationality	England
Best results
National championships	1 × round of 16 ( English Amateur Championship – North )

Frank Callan (* 1920s ; † January 28, 2016 in Fleetwood ) was an English snooker trainer and amateur player who became known as the trainer of various leading snooker players.

Career

Originally from Lancashire , Callan was an amateur player as a youth who was considered the best player in his region at the age of 19 and played his first century break three years later . However, he served in the army from 1940 during the Second World War and did not play snooker again until the age of 27. Nevertheless Callan was successful and won, among other things, the championship of North West England. So he took part in the English Amateur Championship five times until 1964 , but was mostly eliminated in the pre-qualification. Only in 1963 he qualified for the northern qualifying competition, in which, however, he was eliminated in the second round. However, the fishmonger turned to golf and its techniques in the 1960s , before he returned to snooker in the late 1960s due to a back injury. Due to this back injury, Callan had to change his technique, but was again able to win various amateur tournaments. He began coaching snooker players during the 1970s. In the following decades Callan worked with world snooker champions Steve Davis , Stephen Hendry , John Parrott and Terry Griffiths , with women world champion Allison Fisher and with other leading players such as Doug Mountjoy . Callan was also the first coach of James Cahill , who qualified as the first amateur for the finals of the World Snooker Championship in 2019 .

Callan's primary credo was that every player should play with the technique they could best handle. Callan was considered someone with a very high understanding of the game, so that he was considered one of the leading snooker trainers at all. For example, from February 1988 he worked with Doug Mountjoy , among others , who consequently won both the UK Championship in 1988 and the Classic in 1989 after falling to world number 24 . With Stephen Hendry, on the other hand, he discovered a mistake in his cue handling and corrected it, so that Hendry found his old dominant form again after a form low and in 1999 won the snooker world championship for the seventh time .

In 1989 Callan published the textbook Frank Callan's Snooker Clinic together with the snooker journalist John Dee , in which he - similar to Joe Davis in his textbook How I Play Snooker - presented his views and recommendations with regard to certain snooker tactics and playing styles.

Callan died on January 28, 2016 in Fleetwood, depending on the information at the age of 93 or 94 years. Numerous players and officials paid tribute to Callan posthumously; Steve Davis called Callan a "true legend of snooker", while Neal Foulds praised him as a "really great man and father of all snooker trainers". Terry Griffiths, who after the end of his professional career also worked as a sought-after coach, called Callan "the father of training".

Works

• Frank Callan, John Dee: Frank Callan's Snooker Clinic . Partridge Press, London 1989, ISBN 978-1-85225-069-0 (128 pages).

Web links

• Profile of Frank Callan on CueTracker

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Frank Callan - Life and Times. fcsnooker, accessed February 10, 2020 .  
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Coach Frank Callan Passes Away. World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association , January 29, 2016, accessed February 10, 2020 .  
3. ↑ Ron Florax: Frank Callan - Season 1962-1963 - Non-professional Results. CueTracker.net, accessed on February 10, 2020 (English, see other season results).  
4. ^ ^{A b} Doug Mountjoy. In: wst.tv. World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association , accessed February 10, 2020 .  
5. ^ ^{A b} Hector Nunns: Frank Callan Leaves Huge Coaching Legacy. Inside Snooker, January 30, 2016, accessed February 10, 2020 .  
6. ↑ Phil Haigh: James Cahill reveals snub from 'uncle' Stephen Hendry in budding snooker career. Metro , April 21, 2019, accessed February 10, 2020 .  
7. ↑ Hendry pays tribute to coach Frank Callan, who got the Scots attitude back on track Davis praises champion and his magnificent seven. The Herald , May 5, 1999, accessed February 10, 2020 .  
8. ^ Frank Callan's Snooker Clinic: Controversial or Common Sense Advice? Snooker zone, accessed on February 10, 2020 .  
9. ↑ Frank Callan. In: Legacy.com. Fleetwood Weekly News, February 3, 2016, accessed February 10, 2020 .