English Blackball Pool Federation

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The hearing is scheduled for 7th-11th April at Canterbury County Court.

Tribunal Tweets will be following the case…

Live tweeting sessions Abbreviations
J - His Honour Judge Parker
HH - Harriet Haynes, claimant
RW - Robin White, claimant’s barrister
CC - Colman Coyle, claimant's solicitor
EBPF - English Blackball Pool Federation
PT - Paul Thomson, defendant
AG - Anna Goodwin, defendant
SC - Sarah Crowther KC, defendants’ barristers, and
SS - Sapandeep Singh Maini-Thompson
JRL - JR Levins LLP, defendants’ solicitor
JG - James Goodwin, witness for defendant

The original thread has been deleted for “breaking Mumsnet guidelines”. Not sure why but possibly “misgendering” or possibly making it too easy to find the crowdfund @mumsnet it would be good if you could let us know so this thread can stay up. Do we have to pretend that the Claimant is female?

BH meant "relatively" to say that TW have a low power to weight ratio, eg they'd be bad at doing pull ups, where they have to lift their own body weight. the relevance of this to cue sports remains uncertain.

BH declining to venture an opinion on the effect of hormone cycles on strength in women.

Love the judge's last question where BH completely contradicted himself.

He said he didn’t really know much about bridges before. He’s able to comment now, though.

Everyone knows about Bridges because Bridges and Ma Bridges made such a song and dance. So I call shenanigans on that.

Ooh, Defence Counsel says Supreme Court indicated decision will be handed down next Wednesday.

She will want to make further submissions after that. Judge will accept written submissions given the difficulties of diarising a date back in the same room.

Presume whatever the decision is will have an impact on a lot of these tribunals?

Is there good evidence that the muscle mass reduces by such an amount from the previous male level? Is there good evidence that is relatively even lower than that of women?

Great question from the judge there at the end re bridging. Completely trampled the Claimant’s absurd argument.

I meant the bridges formed with a player’s hands in pool. To support the cue.

Judge clearly knows more about bridging than the expert witness.

The idea that using the rest in pool is anywhere near as good as using your own hand to bridge is for the birds. The micro adjustments you can make with your hand and arm just aren’t available when using the rest.

What was that please?

Wouldn't it be rather splendid if Judge T Parker had bought a family pool table during lockdown/played at Uni?

TT is suggesting that they are going to wait to hear from the Supreme Court; oral subs tomorrow and then written submission after the SC judgment.

J - Given a choice between using a rest and a bridge, what would a reasonably competent player choose?
BH - a bridge
J - why?
BH - that's what I've seen
J - well, that suggests it's advantageous
BH - I've got nothing on that

A bridge is more awkward to use than a rest, hence why you see the rest often used in snooker and rarely see the bridge used.

BH doesn't have a clue (cue) whereas the judge appears to have some knowledge of cue sports.

Gosh, isn’t it lucky the dinosaurs were extinct before pool was invented, otherwise all the T. rexes would have cleaned up.

Dr Hilton et al reviewed the evidence and lean muscle mass reduces by between 5 and 10% for males on hormones. That's not a reduction in the entire male advantage, just that aspect of it, and as BH admits, they still have more muscle mass than women.

ETA: The males tested were also not heavy trainers or elite athletes. It remains to be seen if there is any muscle mass reduction at all if previous levels of training are maintained.

no idea.

there's some evidence from the US army around the performance of newly transed soldiers in their army physicals, which might, you'd think intuitively, be of decent quality since participants have an incentive to try hard if failing a physical means getting kicked out.

iirc it showed that many male advantages don't go away (eg running speed) but that certain other advantages, possibly including in bodyweight exercises, are eroded somewhat.

there might be some other subtleties that those studies aren't good at capturing, eg with age, injuries, and so on i'd imagine that the very youngest soldiers will usually be the best performers in most physical tests.

Isn’t the comparison between bridging with your own hand and using a rest to do that for you?

I presume the men wouldn’t be trying as hard if they only had to reach female pass standards as when they had to reach male pass standards. So there would be an incentivised gap there anyway because of lower pass level. I suspect some/many people will do enough to pass and no more. Especially if you consciously want to appear so different from the man that you were the last time.

If I had to walk 5Km with a backpack today. I would do that. If the demand was changed to 2.5K tomorrow, I would not do the 5K tomorrow, only the 2.5K. Would people say my ability had halved? I just wonder how trustworthy having to meet army fitness standards would be. And the women’s now as opposed to the men’s level from last time.

Also, I wonder about the male advantage of lean muscle mass reduced by 5-10% from their previous mass. Does that then supposedly get rid of the difference with women? Can men exercise to compensate (somewhat) for that if they wish? Build their bodies back to higher muscle. There is muscle memory, isn’t there? And they are still men.

There are so many variables here. How often physicals happen, older and less fit anyway. Etc.

Ok, I’m presuming if they were now ‘women’, they were now having to meet the female standards.

Hmm, well this is mildly entertaining! A reminder that cameras should be switched off until you're 'on'.

What happened?

Is that the next witness?