THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES are proving to be a great success in Glasgow, with the limelight being shared by sportsmen and women usually ignored by a media obsessed with football.

Among the array of sports featuring in the Games, there is no snooker. I could probably write a book on the reasons why but at the heart of it lies not the fact that snooker is a non-physical sport – so are shooting and lawn bowls, and they are both in the Games programme – but more a catalogue of historic missed opportunities by the WPBSA.

The World Confederation of Billiard Sports (WCBS) was set up in the 1990s as an umbrella organisation for all cue sports governing bodies, bringing together snooker, billiards, carom and pool associations. Its ultimate aim was to get some, and preferably all, of these sports into the Olympic Games.

They had been included in the Asian Games and the World Games. The latter event exists for sports ratified by the International Olympic Committee but not part of the Olympic Games programme. Snooker has thus sat alongside sports such as trampolining (where competitors have their ups and downs), Tug of War and Dragon Boat Racing. One year, leading official Lawrie Annandale went to referee and, because of withdrawals, ending up playing.

It was hoped snooker would eventually make it out of this somewhat eccentric sporting festival and graduate to the Olympics but it is yet to happen.

Among the various foul-ups by the WPBSA over the years, one of their (former) executives, who had lunched well but not wisely, fell asleep in a WCBS meeting.

In China in 2005 the WPBSA failed to send anyone to a reception with Beijing organisers of the 2008 Olympics who were looking for sports to include. This was at a time where snooker was taking off in China with the emergence of Ding Junhui.

But, most damagingly, when Sir Rodney Walker was WPBSA chairman the governing body stopped co-operating with the WCBS, dealing its credibility as umbrella organisation for worldwide cue sports a massive blow.

When Jason Ferguson returned to the WPBSA chairmanship in 2010 he began to put right some of the wrongs, restoring the WPBSA’s links with WCBS. Snooker was due to be dropped from the 2013 World Games but he lobbied hard for a rethink and the gold was eventually won by India’s Aditya Mehta.

In a piece I wrote for Al Jazeera Sport earlier this year, Ferguson told me the earliest Olympics in which snooker could feasibly be included is 2024.

Inclusion in the Commonwealths would have made great sense as they are being staged in Scotland, which has produced four world snooker champions and plenty of other top players.

In 1997, Stephen Hendry flew to Malaysia on behalf of the game to lobby ahead of the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. There is a report of this in the 1998 World Championship programme, which includes this quote from a WPBSA executive: “Plenty of work still needs to be done, but with the support of players, officials and the snooker public I’m sure we can achieve our ultimate objective of having cue sports competitors in the Olympic, Commonwealth and Asian Games.”

Except, the work wasn’t done and cue sports aren’t in any of these three events, having been dropped from the Asian Games.