How UniSC’s Professor Andy Marshall finds focus and clarity in green, whether it’s the living forests he studies or the green felt he plays on.
When Professor Andy Marshall tells people he’s representing Australia in eight-ball pool, their first reaction is usually disbelief.
Not because he lacks talent; in fact, he recently claimed Player of the Carnival at the Australia Cup, a national championship, bringing home a trophy so big he had to sweet-talk airline staff into letting it on the plane.
No, the surprise comes because Andy is better known around the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) as a forest ecologist and conservation scientist with UniSC’s Forest Research Institute, whose days are usually spent among the greenery of towering rainforest trees, rather than indoors on the green baize.
But for Andy, the connection between pool and forests is stronger than people expect.
“Playing pool is almost meditative for me,” he says. “There’s something hypnotic about staring at those balls on the table, watching the colours, focusing on the angles.
"The world just disappears. Oddly, I get the same feeling out in the forest, listening to birds or watching the wind move through the trees.”
It’s a quirky comparison, but it fits Andy perfectly. Both pool and ecology demand focus, patience, and the ability to see several steps ahead.
When he lines up a shot, he isn’t just thinking about sinking one ball, he’s visualising the whole game.
Likewise, in his research, he’s considering not just a single plant or animal but how whole ecosystems are connected.
“Pool is a bit like chess in that you need to think three, four, even eight shots ahead,” Andy says.
“And in science, it’s the same. You’re always following a logical process, working out what comes next, how each decision leads to the next method or question.”
Andy grew up in the small town of Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire, England, where snooker was “massive” in the 1980s.
“I grew up with it, it was on television all the time, I found it super exciting,” Andy says. “My dad played a lot, as did many guys at that time.
"There were clubs everywhere, many called ‘working men’s clubs,’ where men (and some women) used to go after work and hang out and have a beer.
"Thankfully, it’s much broader now, as we’ve got lots of women playing this sport as well, which is fantastic.”
The fascination quickly became a childhood obsession.
“My duvet cover on my bed had a snooker table picture on it. My dad made me my first table when I was very young, out of wood and felt… and ping-pong balls.”
By his teenage years, Andy was playing competitively for a local club.
“I had the key for the club so I could go in at any time,” he laughs.
Later, he represented both England and Wales at university level, playing in, and repeatedly winning, the British and Home Nations snooker championships.
But even as the green felt drew him in, another kind of green was taking hold.
“The town I grew up in was sort of grey concrete, there wasn’t a huge amount of nature around,” he says.
It was one of his teachers, fittingly named Mrs Peacock, who got him interested in nature.
“She was very into birds, and I got fascinated by them. I started watching them in the garden and looking out for them, getting very excited by things that I had kind of overlooked until then.”
That early spark led him down the path of science.
“I started deciding I wanted to work with zoology, which is what drew me to university eventually.”
A Master’s in Environmental Management followed, and then a PhD in East Africa, where he studied monkeys, only to realise he was becoming more captivated by the plants that they ate and the forests that sheltered them.
“If you know the plants in a forest, you can be interested in these wonderful places at every step you take,” he says.
“I wanted to do something that was going to benefit the forest, and the obvious direction was to start researching forest restoration and management. So that’s what I do now.”
Even though Andy’s science career continued seamlessly when he moved to Australia, pool was harder to hold onto, and the cues went into storage.
“There wasn’t much opportunity to play snooker,” he says. “Then just a couple years ago, I discovered the Sunshine Coast Smashers pool club, and quite a lot’s happened in those two years.”
He’s now earned a place on the Australian team for an exhibition match against the USA in November, followed by the US National Championships, a televised event complete with round robins, doubles matches, and knockout finals.
At this competition Andy will be competing against some of the world’s biggest names in pool, including several professionals and world champions.
"It’s a dream come true, though one that comes with its own challenges," he says.
“Representing the country is a lifetime achievement. I don’t just want to play, I want to go out there and win!”
Andy says he’s looking for local sponsors to help him get to the US National Championships.
The Sunshine Coast Smashers, his local club based in Warana, are on board, along with the Australian 8-Ball Federation.
But Andy hopes more local businesses will take the chance to have their logo seen on his Australian team shirt, and perhaps to back an unusual ambassador for both sport and science.
Because if there’s one thing Andy embodies, it’s the idea that two very different passions can share the same heart.
Whether he’s chalking his cue or measuring a tree, he’s guided by the same instincts of patience, logic, and respect for the bigger picture.
After all, in pool as in conservation, it’s not just about sinking the next shot, it’s about keeping the whole game alive.
Anyone keen on learning more about pool or forests on the Sunshine Coast, can check out the Smashers Facebook page, and the UniSC FRI or LinkedIn page.
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