As one decade ends, Thoughts on what the next one might bring

As the final trophy of the decade was held aloft by Mark Selby last night, thoughts inevitably strayed back to what the last ten years have meant in the game & indeed,what the next ten years might bring.So I decided to dust off the old blog and share some of those thoughts.

Before looking forward then,a brief look back.

When you consider the depths the sport had sunk to At the start of the century,its quite remarkable to see it such rude health today and of course that is down to the genius of one man,Barry Hearn.

Without going in to too much detail the headlines speak for themselves,More tournaments in more places than ever before,with in total 54 more ranking titles on offer this decade compared to the previous one,an increase in prizemoney from £3.5 million to over £!6 million with the promise of more to come & a bigger world wide audience watching the sport than ever before,there really hasn't ever been a better time to be a professional snooker player.

Yes not everything has been perfect, the flat 128 format is not to everyones liking,the shortening of the matches in the UK Championship has knocked some of the sheen of a once great tournament & it'll be a cold day in hell before I recognise the Shoot Out as a ranking event,but the positives far outweigh any negatives and you shudder to think where we'd be if "Bazza" hadn't won that vote!

The other main change in the last decade has been the rise in the average age of the tournament winners. the accepted wisdom of the last 25 years.of this been a young mans game,has been shattered as 40 became the new 20.The reason for this are two fold.Firstly, in the past the thing that happened as players got older was their appetite for practice diminished,With so many tournaments now, players are in a constant state of match fitness, so the hard hours down the club have taken slightly less relevance. The other reason,is sadly a real lack of top talent coming through at the younger end of the scale.

So where does this leave as we look ahead to the "20's"

The Class of '92  have continued to thrill us much longer than any of us could have expected,but tide or time wait for no man & with Williams seemingly already slipping in to semi retirement,Ronnie missing more than he is playing this season & Higgins still fighting valiantly,to the point of yet  another cue change,to try and find some consistency again,the end for this remarkable trio could be appearing soon on the horizon. That said I would be shocked if, before they do eventually leave the the stage, they didn't all have another title or two in them with a fair chance Ronnie could still add to his Triple Crown tally

Also heading towards the veteran stage of their careers as the new decade beckons are former triple crown winners Selby, Robertson & Murphy.It was perhaps appropriate that Selby, as the decades most prolific ranking winner,should win  last nights Scottish Open & in the next few years he'll surely add to his already impressive 17 ranking titles .The same probably applies to Robertson & Murphy, but we are seeing now with all three  a real struggle to get the consistency of old.So yes I do see them all winning more tournaments, but as to whether they will be winning them at the ages the three mentioned in the previous paragraph have ,I have my doubts.

All of which means is that we may well be entering a prolonged period of Judd Trump dominance in the sport. it could even be said that we are already there,with his victories at this year  Masters & World Championship,as well as his big wins already this season. There is no reason why he can't add multiple Triple Crown victories to his cv in the coming years.Of his peers, his main competitors are probably Mark Allen, Kyren Wilson & a recently resurgent Ding junhui,but they will have to step it up to another level on a consistent basis if they are to compete with the Trump of the last 12 months.As for the players coming behind,I really don't see anyone capable of reaching that level & therein lies possibly the main problem facing the sport in the coming years.

Its something we have been hearing for many years ,& as of yet it has failed to materialise, but by pure weight of numbers coming through the teen ranks,it looks like China could well be the sports preeminent nation by the time the next decade finishes. We have this season seen Yan Bingtao rise above the others around him,becoming the third Chinese player to win a ranking title as well as reaching the UK semi finals and if the likes of Zhou Xintong,Zhou Yuelong,Yuan Sijun & Luo Honghao can make the leap,or indeed the next crop of young players who are inevitably coming through, the majority of the sports silverware will be heading East in the not to distant future.

From an Irish point of view, the opposite sadly applies. We started the decade with Ken Doherty & Fergal O'Brien flying the flag for the Rep.Of Ireland & despite a few false dawns with players getting on & then falling off the tour,we finish the decade with those two still our highest ranked players. There is a serious problem with snooker in this country at the moment & a big effort is needed by the governing body RIBSA to arrest the slide in interest. Just what they can do is another question! The one bright spark on the horizon is young Ross Bullman,who hopefully can gain a main tour place in the next year or two. 

Staying at home, it'd be great to see a big tournament return to these shores sooner rather than later. The couple of years the PTC Grand Final were held in Galway they were well attended & the crowds that go to Goffs every year for the the "Legends Tour" show there is still an appetite for live snooker in this country. Personally my dream would be to see something return to Goffs,but anything anywhere could only be a shot in the arm for the game here.

Anyway thats it from me for now. Please feel free to add any thoughts of ur own to the above here or on Twitter,

Till next time

 Terry Griffiths to all

The Masters -Thoughts On The Week

Before we get going,I just want to announce that I've decided to change things up a bit with the blog & it will now be a weekly column concentrating on a different issue within the sport each week,so if anyone has anything they want to see discussed,please leave your suggestion in the comment section or contact me on Twitter @thegreenbaize

Anyway on to the matter in hand and a look back at what we learned over the last week at the Ally Pally.

Well there really is only one place to start & that is with our champion Judd Trump.His 10-4 victory over Ronnie O'Sullivan was as commanding a performance as you are likely to see in a big final and was really just a continuation of what he showed all week. In truth he has looked the likely winner of this tournament from frame one.

Like so many in the past I have been very critical of what appeared to be a lack of respect from Trump for both his talent & the game as a whole, I don't agree with the opinions flying around on social media last night that those suggestions have been proved incorrect,if anything, I think, this week has strengthened that argument. Trump himself has talked about a renewed determination to make the most of his career and the changes he has made really seem to be paying off. Just as the criticisms of the past were well warranted,he equally deserves to be lauded now and will be a force to reckoned with wherever he plays for the rest of the season.

There was also plenty of talk in the aftermath of last nights final that we had just witnessed a "changing of the guard" & "end of an era". I think this may also have been a tad premature.This was Ronnie's 13th final appearance at The Masters and and it would be a brave shout to say it will be his last. If anything,for fans of "The Rocket" seeing how the manner of this defeat seemed to really annoy him last night,it may well spark a renewed effort from him going forward ,even moreso than if he'd coasted to the title here. This one hurt and he'll not want it repeated!

Elsewhere the worrying form of Mark Selby in the "Majors" continued here as after a superb performance in his opening match,he looked all at sea in his quarter final against Trump. This has been a continuation of what we've seen from him over the last season and a half and although he has lifted titles in that time,you have to start wondering are his best days behind him?

Selby turns 36 in June and although snooker has increasingly become an older mans game in the last decade I just don't see him any signs that he can still produce the consistency he once did and in many ways the same applies to Neil Robertson,who turns 37 in a few weeks.Of course such predictions may be made look very silly in the coming months!

On another note,after what has been a very poor spell by his standards, it was great to see Ding Junhui again showing a bit of form. Hopefully he can kick on from here as it would be a real shame to see his career just peter out,without lifting a few more titles and maybe giving the Worlds another good rattle.For all the talk we've heard of the young players from China coming through,Ding is still the undisputed no.1 from that part of the world and the more success he continues to have ,the more the sport there will grow.

Finally just a word on the venue which has become the natural home for this tournament in recent years.Sometimes this sort of "fake auditorium" can really have a poor atmosphere,but here they have somehow managed to make a 2000 seat arena also appear quite intimate.  Even watching on tv last week you could cut the tension with a knife at times.Snooker is a sport that really thrives on packed arenas full of people engaged in whats going on.Speaking of which,next stop on the tour is The Tempodrom for The German Masters!

Talk to ye next week.