All beer and skittles in Sussex

Walk down any high street and you could easily trip over pub display boards promising live Premiership football, hearty pub grub or karaoke evenings inside.

It is more difficult to imagine being enticed in by the chance to play bar billiards, darts, shove ha'penny or skittles.

Authors of the Good Pub Guide 2003 this week revealed that traditional pub games are a severely endangered species.

However, some publicans and punters across Sussex are rallying to keep them alive.

Sussex can lay claim not only to the bar billiards national champion but also the world champion.

And the more obscure game of toad-in-the-hole is thought to originate in East Sussex.

Players take turns trying to throw brass discs, known as toads, down a hole in the middle of a table.

The Lewes Arms in Mount Place, Lewes, offers not only toad-in-the-hole and shove ha'penny, with an authentic Victorian coin, but also "dwyle flunking".

This involves one team designating someone holding a soaking-wet bar towel on a stick to dance in a bucket of stale beer to traditional country music.

When the music stops, they have to try to hit members of the opposing team with the towel, with points awarded for where they hit the opponents.

Last month, the pub hosted a pea-throwing contest and early this month 30 people took part in an annual conker championship.

For those wanting something a little less energetic, the pub also offers darts and dominoes and board games such as Scrabble, Monopoly and chess.

Landlady Claire Murray, said: "We don't have too many young people coming in but I was quite surprised the other day to see three young lads sitting quietly playing Scrabble.

"I think these traditional games are very important. We have never been a pub for music or machines. People come here to talk and interact."

The pub will host a day devoted to pub games on Sunday, November 24.

Sadly, publicans fear the struggle to maintain traditional games is emblematic of the wider pressures on country pubs to survive.

The Richmond Arms in Mill Road, West Ashling, near Chichester, has a skittles alley downstairs which attracts young and old alike.

Landlord John Cutler fears the pub may have to close next year unless general business picks up.

He blames high business rates, high rents charged by breweries, and the enduring legacy of foot-and-mouth, which has meant less trade from passing walkers and cyclists.

He said: "The skittles alley has been here many years and is regularly booked-up. But like all country pubs, we're in danger of disappearing.

"We've had a terrible summer and if we don't have a good Christmas, it could be all over."

Harsh financial reality is thought to be behind the gradual disappearance of bar billiards tables, which are often replaced by pool tables.

Whereas pool games can be over within minutes, the average bar billiards game lasts 20 minutes. At £1 a game, it is clear to see why business managers see more profits in pool.

However, landlords who have stayed true to bar billiards, believe there are less-obvious benefits to the game.

Among the pubs still running bar billiards tables and teams are the Windmill Inn in Southwick, the Stadium Tavern in Hove and the Downs Hotel in Woodingdean.

Tony Thwaites, landlord of the Windmill Inn, said: "When the bar billiards or darts teams come in, they spend a lot of money over the bar.

"That is the kind of thing someone sitting up in head office doesn't realise, which is why many pubs are getting rid of these games."

When he took over the pub two years ago, he resisted attempts by owners Bass to remove the bar billiards table. Since then, he has bought the lease.

Nigel Senior, 26, of Woodingdean, was crowned English champion in bar billiards in Reading, in June.

Next month, he and others from Sussex will travel to Jersey for this year's world championships, won last year by the Stadium Tavern's Jim Millward.

Mr Senior said: "It would be nice to see bar billiards in a few more pubs. There is a very friendly community around the game but we are finding it hard to get new players interested."

Fellow player Richard Wooton, 24, of Telscombe Cliffs, believes the Brighton, Lewes, Worthing and Sussex leagues are among the strongest in the country.

He said: "The game's dying down, there is no doubt about it. There are probably only about 12 pubs round here putting teams up."

Pubs which have decided to get rid of their tables include the Queen Victoria in Rottingdean and The Romans in Southwick.

Staff at the Romans said they no longer had enough space for the table.

Of the 1,318 pubs covered in detail in the new Good Pub Guide, 364 have a darts board, compared with 400 last year.

There are bar billiards tables in just 29 of the pubs, down from 36 in the last survey.

Bar billiards is now less common than the French game of boules, which can be found in 37 of the 1,318 pubs.

The annual World Marbles Championship has been held for the past 70 years at the Greyhound Inn at Tinsley Green, near Crawley.

The village is reputed to have hosted an epic marbles battle between two men in Elizabethan times for the hand of a local maiden.

More than 120 people competed at this year's event in March.

Julia McCarthy-Fox, of the British Marbles Board of Control, said: "We pride ourselves that the tournament is about tradition and competition.

"It is a team game and I think people like to think they are keeping a tradition going."

Alisdair Aird, editor of the Good Pub Guide, said: "When I started the guide 21 years ago, bar billiards was very much more common and darts was practically universal.

"People are no longer happy about driving to a pub ten miles away, spending the evening drinking and playing these games. It may be that they are at home watching darts on television instead.

"Landlords have noticed that when they televise big competitions their sales rocket.

"In the olden days it would have been the same with darts competitions."