One of 12 children, Patsy was born in Dublin but spent most of his playing career living in London. He was hailed as one of the most exiting prospects to emerge in the mid 1970s but his decline was as rapid and dramatic as his rise to fame.

He first came to attention reaching the final of the 1974 English Amateur championship where he lost to Ray Edmonds. Two years later, in the same event, he set a new championship record break of 115. Although he failed reach the final that year he decided to turn professional.

In that first season he made a 147 break on his 25^th birthday, albeit in a local Social Club and managed to reach the last 16 of the world championship. He began the next season with his greatest success. He beat many established professionals to reach the final of the Super Crystalate UK Championship where he beat another first-year pro, Doug Mountjoy 12-9 to take the title. He followed this with victory over Alex Higgins to win the one-off invitation event, The Dry Blackthorn Cup at Wembley Conference Centre. The season ended with a quarter final at the Crucible, where he again beat Higgins, to end his second season ranked 11^th in the world.

1978/79 did not see such great success. He fell at the first hurdle to David Taylor in defence of his UK title and failed in the opening round of the world championship which dropped his ranking down to 16^th. He was however runner up in the Irish Professional championship. He was selected for the Rest of the World team in the inaugural World Cup in 1979 and reached the quarter-final of the UK Championship a few weeks later. This was, surprisingly, to prove to be his last quarter-final in any major event.

He played in every World Cup, on occasions known as the World Team Classic, up to 1983 either as a member of an All-Ireland team or for the Republic. Apart from that he had little success and developed a ‘twitch’ when using the rest that got so bad that he could not use that implement at all and his game suffered.

He managed to reach the Irish Professional final again in 1981 and got to the world last 16 at the Crucible in 1982. Things then went from bad to worse although there was a rare glimpse of this old form when he beat Cliff Wilson and Willie Thorne to reach the last 16 of the world championships again in 1985 before losing to Ray Reardon. By then his ranking had dropped to 33^rd and with lots of new players joining the circuit he found it hard to even win a match. His last success of any note was in reaching the semi-finals of the Benson & Hedges Irish Masters in 1986 before losing to Jimmy White.

By the 1988/89 season, he was unable to win a single match in ranking events and had fallen to 123^rd. The tour was, at that time restricted to 128 players and the bottom ten had to play of against ten qualifiers. Patsy failed to retrain his place and that was the end of a promising career.

Had he not developed that ‘twitch’ which left him unable to release the cue when using the rest, who can tell what he might have achieved but that is something we shall never know.