Legends of the Cue
"Legends of the Cue" is a cue sports history podcast featuring interviews with notable players, promoters, administrators and other people of influence in and around cue sports. We also plan to highlight memorable brands, events and venues. Focusing on the positive aspects of the sport, we aim to create and provide an engaging and timeless repository of content that listeners can enjoy now and forever. Co-hosted by WPA and BCA Hall of Fame member Allison Fisher, Mosconi Cup player and captain Mark Wilson, our podcast focuses on telling the life stories of cue sport’s greatest, in their voices. Join Allison, Mark and Mike Gonzalez for “Legends of the Cue.”
Episodes
142 episodes
Hydred Goldberg - Part 4 (Champion, Ambassador and the Future of Parasport Pool)
Winning a world championship changes how others see you. Winning two can change how you see your responsibility to the sport.In the concluding chapter of Hydred Goldberg’s Legends of the Cue story, the two-time WPA Parasp...
Hydred Goldberg - Part 3 (From Wheelchair Pool to World Champion)
How does a lifelong 9-ball player enter a world championship in a game she has barely played—and leave as the first women’s champion in its history?That unlikely journey is at the heart of Part 3 with Hydred Goldberg on Legend...
Hydred Goldberg - Part 2 (Reinvention, Poolrooms and Finding Her Game)
After a life-changing automobile accident at 18, Hydred Goldberg faced a fundamental question: what would the rest of her life look like?In Part 2 of her Legends of the Cue story, the future two-time WPA Parasport Heyball...
Hydred Goldberg - Part 1 (The Accident That Changed Everything)
Two-time WPA Heyball Parasport World Champion Hydred Goldberg joins Legends of the Cue to begin an extraordinary life story that stretches from London and the Philippines to California—and eventually to the top of international ...
Chris Melling - Part 4 (“The Magician” — Viral Shots, Derby City, Ultimate Pool & Legacy)
Why do they call Chris Melling “The Magician”?Part Four of our Legends of the Cue conversation provides the answer.We begin with perhaps the most famous rack of Melling’s career: his extraordinary World Pool Series clearance again...
Chris Melling - Part 3 (Triumph Through Loss — China Open, Mosconi Cup & MVP)
Some of Chris Melling’s greatest victories came during the most painful period of his life.Part Three of our Legends of the Cue conversation explores the remarkable intersection of loss, resilience and championship performance that helpe...
Chris Melling - Part 2 (Becoming a World Champion)
Chris Melling had the talent. Now he had to prove he could beat the best.In Part Two of our Legends of the Cue conversation, Chris takes us inside his rise from promising young professional to one of the greatest English eight-ball playe...
Chris Melling - Part 1 (From Keighley Kid to Cue-Sports Pro)
Long before Chris Melling became known around the pool world as “The Magician,” he was a working-class kid from Keighley, West Yorkshire, who found both a refuge and a calling in a local snooker club.In Part One of our Legends of the Cue...
Henrik Larsson - Part 4 (Parasport Pool, the WPA and a Legacy Beyond Championships)
In the concluding episode of our four-part Legends of the Cue conversation with Henrik Larsson, we meet a champion who is still winning—but increasingly focused on what he can leave behind.Fresh from another major victory...
Henrik Larsson - Part 3 (Pressure, Rivalries and Six WPA World Championships)
What happens after you become the best—and everyone expects you to keep winning?Part 3 of our Legends of the Cue interview with Swedish wheelchair pool great Henrik Larsson begins with that question and develops into a re...
Henrik Larsson - Part 2 (Stockholm, 2,000 Exhibitions and Becoming a World Champion)
In Part 2 of our Legends of the Cue interview with Henrik Larsson, the aspiring Swedish pool player arrives in Stockholm at age 19 with no elaborate career plan. As Henrik puts it, he was simply addicted to shooting pool—...
Henrik Larsson - Part 1 (Growing Up, Rock Guitar and Discovering Wheelchair Pool)
In Part 1 of our Legends of the Cue conversation with Swedish Parasport pool legend Henrik “Henke” Larsson, we go back long before the world championships and European titles to explore the experiences that shaped one of wheelch...
Darren Appleton - Part 5 (The Fight of His Life—Hall of Fame, Cardiac Arrest and a New Purpose)
The final chapter of Darren Appleton’s Legends of the Cue interview is a powerful story of versatility, loss, survival and renewed purpose. Part 5 begins with Darren’s late-career fascination with one-pocket, a game he learned after mo...
Darren Appleton - Part 4 (World Champion Across Disciplines—U.S. Opens, Heyball and a Historic 200-and-Out)
What does it take to become a world champion across multiple cue sports disciplines? In Part 4 of Darren Appleton’s Legends of the Cue interview, the BCA Hall of Famer revisits the extraordinary championship run that established him as...
Darren Appleton - Part 3 (Inside the Mosconi Cup—Leadership, Rivalry and Team Europe)
Few players have embodied the emotion of the Mosconi Cup like Darren Appleton. In Part 3 of his Legends of the Cue interview, the European pool icon goes inside the team room, the arena and the pressure cooker that transformed the annu...
Darren Appleton - Part 2 (Reinventing a Champion—From English 8-Ball to World 10-Ball Glory)
Darren Appleton’s rise was anything but gradual. In Part 2 of this Legends of the Cue interview, “Dynamite” recalls winning the first professional tournament he entered, developing one of pool’s most admired cue deliveries and making t...
Darren Appleton - Part 1 (From Pontefract to Professional Pool—The Making of “Dynamite”)
Before Darren “Dynamite” Appleton became a multiple world champion and BCA Hall of Famer, he was a fiercely competitive kid growing up on a council estate in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. In Part 1 of this five-part Legends of the Cue in...
Alan McManus - Part 6 (The Future of Snooker, Pool vs. Snooker, and Alli’s Rapid Rack)
The sixth and final part of our Legends of the Cue interview with Alan “Angles” McManus looks forward as much as it looks back. After tracing Alan’s journey from Glasgow schoolboy to Masters champion, Crucible semi-finalist, commentato...
Alan McManus - Part 5 (From Professional Snooker Player to Commentator, Analyst, and Podcaster)
In Part 5 of our Legends of the Cue conversation with Alan McManus, we follow his transition from the professional arena to the commentary box, the television studio, and the world of podcasting.After more than three decades as ...
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Alan McManus - Part 4 (Beating Stephen Hendry, Winning the Masters, and Crucible Memories)
Part 4 of our Alan McManus series brings us to the championship heart of his career: the 1994 Masters at Wembley, the famous final against Stephen Hendry, and the long arc of a professional snooker life lived at the highest level.Alan ta...
Alan McManus - Part 3 (Steve Davis, Jimmy White, Technique, Talent, and the Rise of “Angles”)
Part 3 of our Legends of the Cue series with Alan “Angles” McManus explores the influences, techniques, rivalries, and self-awareness that helped define his rise in professional snooker.Alan looks back on Steve Davis as the mode...
Alan McManus - Part 2 (Pool Rooms, Road Players, Turning Pro, and the Discipline of Safety)
In Part 2 of our Legends of the Cue interview with Alan McManus, the conversation moves from Glasgow snooker halls to New York pool rooms, from schoolboy promise to professional ambition, and from natural ability to the hard-earned cra...
Alan McManus - Part 1 (Glasgow Beginnings, “Angles,” and the Making of a Snooker Mind)
In Part 1 of our extended Legends of the Cue conversation with Scottish snooker great Alan “Angles” McManus, we begin where every cue-sports life story should begin: at the first table, with the first cue, and with the first signs that...
Jorgen Sandman - Part 6 (A Pool Player with a Dream: on Survival, Service, and Legacy)
The final chapter of Jorgen Sandman’s Legends of the Cue interview brings together the personal and the historic: a lifetime of service to pool, a near-death experience, a renewed commitment to the WPA, and a simple answer to how he wa...
Jorgen Sandman - Part 5 (The Olympic Dream: World Games, Brisbane, and Pool’s Global Future)
Can pool become an Olympic sport? In this fifth episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen Sandman offers one of the clearest explanations you will hear of where billiards sports stand in the Olympic movement, what still has to happen, and ...
