Am I related to Ray Reardon?

-
I have always wondered whether I am related to the six times World Champion, Ray Reardon. Ray was born in Tredegar in South Wales and my Grandfather, John Reardon was born in Ebbw Vale. Let’s hope so!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Which way, left or right?

-
Image
One of the greatest spats that occurred in snooker history was between my friend Alain Robidoux and Ronnie O’Sullivan. It occurred in 1996 at the World Championship. Ronnie, a then young whipper snapper at 19, trounced Alain in the match, winning 10-3. However beyond the win, a spat occurred when Ronnie decided to take a number of shots left handed. Robidoux criticised O’Sullivan after the match for being “disrespectful”. Ronnie hit back at Alain saying “if he wants to act like a baby that’s up to him” adding “ the crowd enjoyed it, that’s the main thing”. This was probably the first time that a player had dared to take multiple shots left handed and led to players attempting the same feat. Perhaps this wouldn’t have been become a regular occurrence if this hadn’t of happened. This snooker bust up led to Alain refusing to shake Ronnie’s hand at the end of the match. Robidoux later explained his actions saying “Ronnie was being disrespectful to his fellow professionals and should sa...
Read more

Place your bets

-
Image
Match fixing in snooker has unfortunately been in operation since the very early days of the game with reports of Joe Davis having "carried" weaker opponents in multi-session matches to maximise the gate revenue. This trait continued through the history of the sport with players such as Willie Thorne and Alex Higgins claiming they were offered large sums of money to lose matches. Players may not enter a match fixing agreement on their own free will, being subject to threats of violence if they fail to submit. The lucrative criminal act is largely based in the Far East where gangs devise money making scams in various sports, using their players to infiltrate the individual sport and extract multimillion currency earnings. Although this happens, World Snooker has been very vigilant to attempt to stamp out this criminal activity in recent years. The main punishment being heavy fines or bans from the game. Recognisable figures such as Quentin Hann, Stephen Lee and Joe Joggi...
Read more

The World is your Oyster

-
Image
With snooker becoming a major force in the world of sport, it is only right that I dedicate a blog to snooker globally. Much is known about snooker in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland but what about the sport outside our shores? If we travel across the English Channel, France doesn’t seem interested in snooker and hasn’t hosted any tournaments since the heady days of the 1980s. Moving to its neighbour Germany, I have said in a previous blog that it has a massive fan base, one of the best tournaments on the calendar, the German Open and few snooker clubs within and outside Berlin. Ex Communist states as Latvia and Bulgaria also appreciate the game but have lost their televised events due to the pressures of increasing the snooker calendar and with Norway producing Anita and Kurt Maflin, there is little play of the sport anywhere else in Central Europe barring Malta that hasn’t produced a major player since Tony Drago. Moving to the Middle East, snooker hasn’t been big ...
Read more