Snooker Loopy

The Crucible has been a long standing venue for snooker's World Championship tournament. Since 1977, the thrills and spills of the sport have been played out in this Sheffield theatre and it has become a treasure that is savoured by all that survey. However in recent weeks, The World Snooker Tour, as the body is now called, has revamped its Masters event at the Alexandra Palace, proving those who wish to pay a bit extra the chance to experience the VIP treatment with private viewing boxes installed, a Century Club and a soft seating area at the back of the arena. The question has been posed of whether to roll this out this out to other tournaments and especially the World Championship. When this question was posed on Twitter regarding revamping the Crucible event, there was swift retort from Barry Hearn, Chairman of the World Snooker Tour, saying: "Crucible stays as it is. Too special to change" With only 980 seats, the Crucible provides an intimate atmosphere wi...

Mention the name Ron Gross in the snooker circle and nothing comes back but warm memories and praise for this great man. A former amateur and professional player, Ron Gross lived through the golden era of snooker, spanning from the post war years to the development of the World Championship. Ron was a three time amateur champion, winning the title in 1957,1960, 1962 and was a late addition to the professional tour, turning professional in 1972. He even beat the late, great Joe Davis in an exhibition match. He had a mixed fortune at the World Championship with his best performance being in 1973 when he made the last 24. Ron was lucky enough to play in a era when the likes of Patsy Houlihan, Patsy Fagan and lesser known players  like Wally West who also owned the Top Spot Snooker Hall. This was an era where you could literally get drunk on the atmosphere that snooker created. Players flocked to Ron’s club in Neasden to play and this was a club that was a hub for money games. Open t...

For anyone who is involved in snooker, you would have seen Gary Wilkinson in the tournament foyer issuing passes and tickets to people attending. However before joining the World Snooker Tour team, Gary was part of the man tour as a player from 1987-2006. I remember Gary from when I first started watching snooker and was impressed by his calibre as a player. He competed in a era when Alex Higgins and Steve Davis were fading lights in the sport and Stephen Hendry had made a meteoric rise to the top of the game. Wilkinson first came to the forefront of snooker when he beat Alex Higgins in the non-ranking WBSA Invitational event in 1988, 5-4. However Gary played at a time when single person dominance was still apparent and this was a major stumbling block for many of those who competed at the time for the winning glory. Wilkinson sadly came up against that barrage of competition and never reached his full potential. Gary managed to get through to two major finals, losing in the Brit...

An announcement was made by Barry Hearn just before Christmas that World Snooker had signed a ten year deal for a tournament in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, beginning this October. With a total prize fund of £2.5 million pounds, one lucky winner gets set to scoop £500,000 in prize money. These are exciting times as snooker blows the sand off the tables of this region. Anyone who knows the history of snooker in this neck of the woods knows that mixed success exists here, the Dubai Classic ran successfully for many years and the Bahrain Open bombed after one tournament due to a poor response. The aim of targeting this area of the world is two fold. First to showcase snooker and secondly to energise a new market, bringing potential Arabic players out of the woodwork to play on the main stage. Hearn hopes that this approach will continue to expand his snooker mission of  the globalisation of the sport. Barry Hearn has sold this tournament to players by saying that you can either take part...

Stephen Lee was probably one of the most recognised players in snooker until recently and impressed his audience with a game that was accompanied with a Rolls Royce cue action that only is equalled by Shaun Murphy currently. A player who turned professional in 1992, he rose up the ranking list and  climbed to a high of number five. His game dipped before he returned to form in the 2011/12 season and compiled 184 centuries in his career. I was inspired to write this piece after learning that an online petition has been mounted to campaign for his return to the sport with 783 signatures. Lee was banned from snooker after the governing found him guilty of match fixing, deliberately losing matches for financial gain. A series of matches were cited including matches against Ken Doherty and Marco Fu in the Malta Cup in 2008, losing the first frame against Stephen Hendry and Mark King at the 2008 UK Championship and losing matches with a pre-determined score against Neil Robertson at the ...

Carrying on my Welsh theme from yesterday I would like to turn attention from a well known player to one that let’s say the older fan would have heard of. I have been following snooker since 1987 and have seen many players come and go but one that I admit I had forgotten is the Welsh player, Tony Chappel. Tony from Pontarddulais in Swansea graced the professional stage for seventeen year between 1984-2001 and had a highest ranking of 32 in the 1990-1992 season. He made 41 career centuries, earned £255,728 in prize money and achieved a high break of 143 in the 1998 Benson and Hedges Championship. He was always one of the few players to make a 147 clearance in a Pro AM event. I decided to write about Chappel because he was one of those players that surprised on the baize. You always hear about shock wins in snooker and he was responsible for quite a few of the upsets. Researching this piece, I found out that this Welsh player beat quite a few of the top players of the time, including S...

“I have never felt such a desire to make a success of my snooker career. I now feel so driven by the dark times I have been through and I can’t wait to be back doing what I do best - playing professional snooker “. Last year I did a piece for the SnookerFans website on the player Jamie Jones and how one of my favourite players had been suspended from the sport for failing to report a match fixing report. This for me is a heartfelt story and had left the highly talented Welsh player out of the game for a year. Jamie commented after the ordeal that this had been “the worst year of his life” and left him having to   earn a living working as a grass cutter for his local council just to pay the bills. Jones feeling low and for a while, not being able to leave the house, has had to get used to not using his cue to seek glory and has been somewhat forgotten for the massive inroads he made into snooker when he was a top professional player. That is not to say I agree with any form of ir...