WHEN is an international not an international? When she's an England national pool player.

Just ask Lancashire's hot-pot Tracy Robinson.

The 22-year-old player is on the fast-track to England stardom - but she still has a long way to go before she makes the international scene.

Tracy, already the North West's number one, won a route to the England set up with a gruelling win in the national play-offs in Great Yarmouth last week.

But it may not prove enough to guarantee her a stab at the global circuit . . .

"The national team play-offs were tough," says Tracy. "There were 64 women in the running and I played for 10 hours to win the right to play for my country."

But the bad news is that of the 13-strong team, only the top six can travel abroad for international tournaments.

That means not only another play-off, but another trip down south for the Accrington-based player: "The play-offs for the top six are in Oxford in May, and I'm going down for that. In fact, most of the games are in the south - as the only player on the team based in the north west that puts me at a disadvantage from the word go."

Playing out of the Boars Head on Burnley Road in Accrington, Tracy is the only player from the North West to make the final 13.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.