TRIBUTES have been paid to Saron snooker legend Agnes Davies, who has died aged 90.

A pioneer of women's snooker whose competitive career spanned 64 years, the former Agnes Morris took up the game after her father, who had been forced to leave the pit due to pneumoconiosis, used his compensation money to open a one-table snooker hall in the village.

At 17, Agnes won the women's amateur championship without losing a frame and in 1949 she won the women's professional title - effectively a world crown - at London's Leicester Square hall.

Agnes would recall how she was trailing 5-0 to Thelma Carpenter in the final when a busker began to sing outside.

Carpenter became progressively more distracted by this and did not win another frame either in that session or the next day's, and the Welsh girl ended up winning 10-5.

Marriage and motherhood led to a 30-year retirement before she returned to win the Women's Billiards Association (WBA) snooker title in 1978.

At the age of 60, she reached the final of an official Women's World Open Championship before losing to Australia's Lesley McIlrath, which she admitted was her greatest disappointment.

Agnes often felt that the women's game suffered from relentless comparison with the men's: "They shouldn't do it, because they don't do that in any other sport," she complained.

Even when her lifetime highest break of 84 was long behind her, she continued to compete, and played for Wales in the home international series until 1999, and for two more years in the Amman Valley league, first for Ammanford British Legion and subsequently for Ammanford Snooker World.

In 1985, she was elected president for life of the World Ladies Billiards & Snooker Association.

She is survived by a son, two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her husband, Dick, died in 1996.