Jackie Rea was one of snooker’s great characters who believed, like his contemporary, Fred Davis, that the game should be fun. Unfortunately he was at his best when snooker was at its lowest ebb in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

He started playing in his father’s pub and when he won the Irish Amateur Championship in 1947 he immediately turned professional and, straight away won the Irish Professional Championship which he held continuously, apart from  losing it briefly to Jack Bates in 1952, until Alex Higgins successfully challenged him in 1972.

He first entered the world championship in 1949 but lost in the qualifiers and his next attempt was in 1952 when the Professional Matchplay championship replaced the official world championship for a few years following a dispute with the governing body. Records for that event are incomplete but Jackie won his first round match and lost in the semi-finals. He lost in the first round in 1953 and 1954 but was a semi-finalist again in 1955 and 1956 losing to Fred Davis and John Pulman respectively. In 1957 he reached the final but John Pulman proved too good for him. In the meantime he had won the News of the World tournament in 1955, beating Joe Davis into second place having been runner-up in that same event two years before.

After that 1957 world championship, the event ceased, due to lack of support, until 1964 and Jackie did not enter again until 1969 when he reached the quarter-finals which he repeated the following year. He was in the lineup for the very first season of Pot Black in 1969. After that he never again got beyond the first round and did not feature when the first ranking lists were published. He continued to play on the circuit until 1990 but rarely got past the qualifying stages of any event.