Edward James O'Donoghue, who died in Auckland on Monday, aged 93, never won a professional billiards or snooker title but his skills as a player and master coach were recognised worldwide. "Murt" (a name he preferred) scored his first four-figure break at billiards, 1,080 (including 278 nursery cannons) at Gisborne, New Zealand, in 1930 and, more memorably, four years later compiled the first recognised maximum snooker break (147) at Griffith, NSW.

O'Donoghue was a contemporary of the great professional cuemen of the 1920s and 1930s but he shunned official competition, in which the rewards were meagre. He preferred money matches and from 1926 made 12 trips to Australia, where he settled after retiring as a player in 1938.

At Te Aroha, where he was born, he was the first player in the world to score a century break at snooker (102) with composition balls. At Auckland in 1928 he was the first player to make a total (every ball)snooker clearance break of 134. At City Tattersalls Club, his Sydney base, O'Donoghue's feats are still remembered - 1,500 points at billiards in three visits in a one-hour match against Harold Darke, and two 250-up wins over the British Empire champion Les Hayes without the latter scoring.

In later years, O'Donoghue invested in 27 billiards rooms and in trotting horses, of which his best, the pacer Sylvette, won six races at Harold Park. At his Liverpool home in Sydney, he continued to practise, experiment, coach and demonstrate to scores of players from novices to champions. They included Eddie Charlton, who dominated Australian professional snooker for 21 years, and Robby Foldvari who, in 1986, became Australia's first world professional billiards champion since the late Walter Lindrum.

In 1974, a month before his 74th birthday, O'Donoghue scored a break of 1,015 at "floating white" top-of-the-table billiards, in which the opposing white did not touch the top cushion. He qualified the feat by admitting he played "in his socks" and that he stopped near the 500-mark for "a cuppa".