TWO of Lincoln's best-ever snooker aces are to lock horns in a battle of the generations.

Veteran John Stobie, aged 73, will take on the young pretender Matt Lee, aged 31, over two nights, starting tomorrow with a seven-frame game at Moorlands Railway Club on Newark Road (7pm start).

The pair will then play out an eight-frame showdown at Lincoln Snooker Club on Silver Street at 7pm on September 17.

Both Lee and Stobie can claim to have won the Lincoln Senior Snooker title several times, but the duo have met just once when Lee was only 19.

Stobie won the game 3-1 at the Civil Defence Club, but a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.

Lee went on to win the Lincoln Senior Snooker title and Stobie has moved away from competitive games.

But the duo have been pulled together to answer a question they cannot: Who is the best of the two generations?

"It'll be one of the two," joked Stobie when the pair met up prior to the clash at Lincoln Snooker Club in St Peter Arches off Silver Street.

"I think Matt might have the edge because of youth, but I'm hoping I can cause him some problems."

Lee believes the first game tomorrow night will go a long way to deciding the winner.

"If I can get a good result in the first game, then the platform is set for the final match," explained Lee, who works at Bifrangi in North Hykeham.

The duo talk easily about their love of the sport in the shadows of a corner of the club.

Lee started playing his snooker around the corner at the former 147 club on Silver Street with his grandad, while Stobie explains how his first entrance into the game as a teenager growing up in the north-east left him 'embarrassed'.

"I was nearly 14 and I was invited to play a game of snooker round a friend's house as he had got himself a six by three table," said Stobie, who moved to Lincolnshire after being demobbed from the RAF and started working in a forge in North Hykeham in 1965.

"At first I'd never heard of snooker, I had no idea what it was. I watched him and some other lads play and then had a go. The first time I hit the white ball it ended up flying off the table and landed into the fire.

"I was politely asked to leave.

"I was livid. I was so embarrassed, I felt this was something I had to learn and so I started to play a bit more."

In time both of them excelled in their own era in Lincoln.

Stobie reached his height when he played an exhibition match against former world champion, the late Alex Higgins, over two nights at Lincoln's Drill Hall.

The mercurial Ulsterman and Stobie wowed over 500 people over the two nights, with Higgins winning 13-9.

Lee has locked horns with Mark Selby, but both agree the city needs to do more than bring professionals in for exhibition matches, it needs to create its own future star.

"We're desperately lacking a professional player in Lincoln," said Lee.

"But there needs to be interest in the first place and I hope this game will bring some more interest into the game and maybe it might spark something in someone."

Stobie agreed with his young challenger.

"It is sad that snooker is not as big as it once was in the city," said Stobie.

"We had some great players like Ken Baptist and Pat Emerson. I hope we can get that quality back."