Page 33 | English Blackball Pool Federation

Signalbox · 2025-04-06T07:40:51+00:00

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 {mention: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?

moto748e · 23/04/2025 22:36

Really good news, and a case of all golden bridges accepted, I think. HH's case is surely dead in the water now? To get into the elite men's group in UP (may well be the same for the women, I don't know), you have to score very highly in a lower division, the Championship, and the best few of them get 'promoted' into the top group. I wonder if HH would be willing to go through that procedure or not? And good enough? My opinion, FWIW, is that HH is just about as good as the top female players, and like them, is capable of turning over the some of the top men from time to time. But not that often. I suspect the best young men coming through at Championship level are a bit better.

TrainedByCats · 28/04/2025 12:09

EBPF are due to give an update by 3rd May but have agreed to women only. The campaign emailed an update to donors today and it can be read at the crowdjustice page here https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/let-women-play-pool/

I’m very happy to have contributed to this, the success rate of these cases is phenomenal. I don’t have the courage of the wonderful sheroes that bring the cases so appreciate the opportunity crowd funding gives me to feel I’ve played a small part.

Let women play pool!

We are a group of female players from across the UK and abroad, ranging from young to old with a passion for playing pool, striving to regain fairness for female-born players in the women's category.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/let-women-play-pool/

TrainedByCats · 28/04/2025 12:15

Oops I forgot a crowdjustice link would mean my reply would be hidden.

Just wanted to say donors got an update this morning that EBPF will be making an announcement confirming women only by 3rd May. I’d linked to the closed fundraiser as it had the full update but that caused my reply to be automatically hidden.

Statement copied below ————

Update on Let women play pool!

Women in Pool react to the reintroduction of women's competition by Ultimate Pool
We are pleased to see that Ultimate Pool announced yesterday that its women's competitions will, with immediate effect, be open exclusively to women.
https://x.com/ultimatepool/status/1915089233233973566
This is the result of 15 months of legal action which we have been pursuing against Ultimate Pool, and against the World Eightball Pool Federation (now the International Eightball Pool Federation). With the assistance of our lawyers, we had put them on notice that we would be suing them for sex discrimination if they maintained their previous rules, which permitted males entry to female competition, thus discriminating against women.
At our instruction, our lawyers informed the two pool bodies' lawyers that we would be prepared to forego litigation if experts could be jointly instructed to determine whether or not the sport of pool was "a gender-affected" activity as defined in the Equality Act 2010. We further proposed that, if the experts' report concluded that pool is in fact a "gender-affected activity", they would change their rules to reflect this forthwith, thus negating the need to litigate. The two pool bodies agreed with this proposal.
We and the two pool bodies jointly identified the appropriate experts - one on human biology, and one on cue sports - and the specific terms on which the experts were instructed. The experts co-operated to produce a joint report that concluded unequivocally that pool is gender-affected. As a consequence of this, the pool bodies have been left with no alternative but to change their rules to protect women's competition.
We are pleased that this strategy has succeeded, and that Ultimate Pool has now changed its rules as we had sought. We await IEPF following suit, as they have agreed to do. We have granted them an extension of time until 3 May for them to bring their rule change into effect. We hope IEPF fulfils the agreement we had reached, and that we are not required to litigate.
We want to take this opportunity to thank the legions of women - and men - who contributed to our crowdfunding campaign, which enabled us to instruct the lawyers to achieve this outcome. We are extremely grateful to them. It has meant that women can again play in fair competition in the sport they love. This would not have been possible without the people who donated their money.
This has been a long process, the nature of which has meant that we have not always been able to share information to the extent that we would have liked, in order to enable the negotiations that have now - at least as far as Ultimate Pool is concerned - achieved their desired outcome.
This has taken a significant toll on all of us, but one of our number in particular - Lynne - has suffered significantly as a consequence of standing up for women's rights. This matter is not concluded, and we will pursue this further.
Thank you again.
Francoise Rogers
Holly Cann
Jo Hobday
Lynne Pinches
And many other women, whose names we are not able to share for fear of retribution.

https://x.com/ultimatepool_/status/1915089233233973566

Harassedevictee · 28/04/2025 12:43

This is good news. Hopefully more sports will follow.

BundleBoogie · 28/04/2025 13:01

TrainedByCats · 28/04/2025 12:15

Oops I forgot a crowdjustice link would mean my reply would be hidden.

Just wanted to say donors got an update this morning that EBPF will be making an announcement confirming women only by 3rd May. I’d linked to the closed fundraiser as it had the full update but that caused my reply to be automatically hidden.

Statement copied below ————

Update on Let women play pool!

Women in Pool react to the reintroduction of women's competition by Ultimate Pool
We are pleased to see that Ultimate Pool announced yesterday that its women's competitions will, with immediate effect, be open exclusively to women.
https://x.com/ultimatepool/status/1915089233233973566
This is the result of 15 months of legal action which we have been pursuing against Ultimate Pool, and against the World Eightball Pool Federation (now the International Eightball Pool Federation). With the assistance of our lawyers, we had put them on notice that we would be suing them for sex discrimination if they maintained their previous rules, which permitted males entry to female competition, thus discriminating against women.
At our instruction, our lawyers informed the two pool bodies' lawyers that we would be prepared to forego litigation if experts could be jointly instructed to determine whether or not the sport of pool was "a gender-affected" activity as defined in the Equality Act 2010. We further proposed that, if the experts' report concluded that pool is in fact a "gender-affected activity", they would change their rules to reflect this forthwith, thus negating the need to litigate. The two pool bodies agreed with this proposal.
We and the two pool bodies jointly identified the appropriate experts - one on human biology, and one on cue sports - and the specific terms on which the experts were instructed. The experts co-operated to produce a joint report that concluded unequivocally that pool is gender-affected. As a consequence of this, the pool bodies have been left with no alternative but to change their rules to protect women's competition.
We are pleased that this strategy has succeeded, and that Ultimate Pool has now changed its rules as we had sought. We await IEPF following suit, as they have agreed to do. We have granted them an extension of time until 3 May for them to bring their rule change into effect. We hope IEPF fulfils the agreement we had reached, and that we are not required to litigate.
We want to take this opportunity to thank the legions of women - and men - who contributed to our crowdfunding campaign, which enabled us to instruct the lawyers to achieve this outcome. We are extremely grateful to them. It has meant that women can again play in fair competition in the sport they love. This would not have been possible without the people who donated their money.
This has been a long process, the nature of which has meant that we have not always been able to share information to the extent that we would have liked, in order to enable the negotiations that have now - at least as far as Ultimate Pool is concerned - achieved their desired outcome.
This has taken a significant toll on all of us, but one of our number in particular - Lynne - has suffered significantly as a consequence of standing up for women's rights. This matter is not concluded, and we will pursue this further.
Thank you again.
Francoise Rogers
Holly Cann
Jo Hobday
Lynne Pinches
And many other women, whose names we are not able to share for fear of retribution.

Edited

That is fantastic work by these women. This will have come at a huge personal cost and they have been amazing.