Northern Irish Open - Talking Points

After a 6 week break since the British Open, the first of the seasons Home Nations events in Belfast ,was much anticipated in the snooker community & as a spectacle it certainly lived up to expectations.

Mark Allen

There really is only one place to start with a review of the week & that is with our champion. Since this tournament came back on to the calendar 6 years ago Allen's record in it had been patchy at  best, but with the home crowd getting ever more excited as the week went on & the pressure increasing on him,he continuously rose to the occasion.Just how much winning this title meant to him was obvious as he potted match ball in the final. Allen has for years been one of the top players in the game & should really have more titles to his name.Hopefully he can now get his off table issues sorted to everyone's satisfaction & start pushing again for the big ones.

John Higgins

When Higgins moved two up with three to play the other night, it seemed yet another ranking title was heading its way back to Scotland, but he just couldn't land the final blow. That shouldn't take away from another great week for the "The Wizard of Wishaw". At the end of last season John seems to have made the decision that if he is to last in this game he needed to make some lifestyle changes. Over the summer he adopted a serious fitness regime & the results were there to see last week. In so far any of these things can predicted,I would be shocked if we don't see him lift a few trophies this season. 

The men in form

The old Championship Leagues over the last two seasons have been much derided by snooker fans, but victory for David Gilbert in its most recent incarnation, not only removed the "best player to not win a ranking title" from his cv ,but has also given him the confidence in himself to mix it with the best. Once again here he played really well all week before going down to Higgins in the last 8. On this form he'll certainly be going deep in plenty of tournaments this season.

Also in this category I'd put two players at opposite ends of their careers. Ricky Walden has been plagued by injury the last few years, but with those issues seemingly behind him he looked like his old self here again here & at the other end of the age spectrum, Yan Bingtao, continues to impress with his all round matchplay. Its hard to believe he is still only 21 & he continues to look the natural successor to Ding Junhui as the standard bearer from China.

Tetchy Ronnie

One again last week Ronnie O'Sullivan made the headlines & not for what he did on the table. Over the few days he was in the tournament he made a series of statements that, as ever with him, bore a fair bit of truth,  but could have been expressed more diplomatically. For example I don't think anyone would argue that a Home Nations win is equal to a Triple Crown victory,but to look back at some of the victors in these events they have provided their career highlight & that should not be minimised.Also his comments about the lack of atmosphere were fair enough,but do we expect much else in the early rounds,  especially in a multi table set up? Anyway no matter what we do in life, we have times where we're just not feeling it & last week seemed to be that for Ronnie.Hopefully the next event see's him in better humour.

Return of the crowds

Finally much was made again during the week of the return of the viewing public & how much more we appreciate them after all the closed door tournaments last season. The crowd certainly got more involved as the week went on & by Sunday night, with the home favourite in the final, they were in full voice. The scenes here were reminiscent of the old Wembley Conference centre & although they did at times threaten to stray over the line of what is acceptable , there is no doubting the part they played in the dramatic finale.It was great to see.

So there we have it, A couple more weeks of qualifiers now to keep us entertained before the English Open begins on November 1st & from then on to Christmas its go,go,go.

Talk to ye again next week.

The "147" Still Magical After All These Years

 This was the only time in all the years I'd known Joe that he revealed nerves.When the cheering had died down an we began to move from the table to my office he gasped; Ted! For Gods sake pour me a large brandy". After sinking it even faster than the last black in his 147, he phoned his wife June, who knew how much that maximum break meant to him and told her the good news. Understandably enough, she burst into tears.- Ted Lowe on the Joe Davis's first 147.

There was a moment the other day, when Mark Allen rolled in that length of the table yellow to keep his break alive, that the camera flicked to the audience & people were literally hopping up and down from their seats with excitement. If anything shows just what a hold moments like these have over the snooker world, it was this. After all, can you think of any other sporting achievement that still means so much after it has been done for the 170th time?

This coming January 11th, we will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first official televised 147, when Steve Davis took 11 minutes & 53 seconds to create that bit of snooker magic at The Oldham Civic Centre, famously winning a Lada Car for his trouble ( the tournament was the Lada Classic after all )

By irony his opponent on the night was John Spencer, who a couple of years previously had been denied this honour when the tv cameras were not rolling for his "maxi" & the break itself was then confined to history because the pockets were not templated properly.

Over the years of course we have seen the number of players achieving the break continuously increase,but still in 40 years, when you look at the amount of frames played, 170 is still a small enough number to make being a member of the club feel pretty exclusive.

This is understandable when you think of all the things that have to fall in to place to make it possible.Firstly you have to pot the opening red and finish on the black. Ideally this would be early in the frame,before any safety has pushed reds to safe positions.Then, if you've started with three or four reds & blacks, you might start to think  "this is on" ,but the state of the match comes in to play. The first priority in every frame is to win it, so invariably at some stage a player will have to make a conscious decision to commit to it, often turning down easier position on another colour to stay on the black. If a match is still in the balance this is a brave choice to make. Once the tenth red has gone down the frame is safe,but now nerves come in to it. At this stage the crowd are all fully aware of whats happening and are willing every ball in. As their excitement builds you need to keep your own in check. If you are playing in a multi table arena, play will have stopped on those tables as you start to clear the colours.All eyes are on you now & everyone expects you to do it. You have cleared the colours hundreds of thousands of times, but this is different. Palms getting sweaty you try to stay calm. Eventually you get to the final black, ideally just off straight with your hand on the table, you roll it in & the place erupts.

Sadly at times, after completing all the hard work, that final black at times can prove at step too far. Thepchaiya Un-Nooh ,twice missed the final black in the same season, but the most famous final black miss was from poor old  Ken Doherty. Playing Matthew Stevens in the 2000 Masters final, with the 147 prize of a Honda Sportscar waiting to be claimed, Ken missed the easiest of blacks.The crowd still rose to give a standing ovation as Ken departed the table, but this was more the clap of sympathy you get at football matches when a player is stretchered off. Thankfully Ken did get to join the "147 club" later in his career, but after his World championship win in 1997, it is that missed black he will be most remembered for.

In the 40 yrs since Steve created that piece of snooker history, we have witnessed  so many great maximum moments, so whether your favourite is Bill Werbernuik peaking around the curtain at his friend Cliff Thorburn, Kirk Stevens leaping in the air, Ronnie whizzing around in 5 minutes or one you were in the audience to witness yourself ( for me it was standing backstage in the arena as Ding Junhui cleared the colours in the PTC Garnd Finals in Galway) Long may the 147 be something that thrills the snooker world.

The Ranking Problems Solved- A Proposal

 Well after a bit of a false start in August,the season gets going again in earnest this weekend with the Northern Ireland Open kicking off in the wonderful Waterfront theatre in Belfast. With this in mind I figured it was high time I revved up the old blog again, but now in the guise of a weekly column covering some of the hot topics in the sport. 

The question then was where to start? I decided I might as well go all in with a new proposal designed to solve the problems with our current ranking system.

One of the early changes made during the "Hearn revolution" was to address the problems with the old ranking system.The system, as it was,was stagnant & served only to protect those at the top of the game.The changes made introduced a 2 year rolling ranking system based solely on money earned.This on the face of it seemed much fairer, as players were rewarded on current form, but problems also emerged.Chief among these was the discrepancy in prize money between the world championship and every other event.

For the most obvious example we have to look back at the 2015/16 season.In the May of 2015, Stuart Bingham had sprung one of sports biggest surprises when he beat Shaun Murphy in the final to claim the world title. This undoubtedly is the pinnacle for any snooker player,but it comes with its own baggage. For the following year, you are introduced wherever you go as "The world champion".This can weigh heavy on your shoulders & especially as a first time winner. That was certainly the case with Stuart, as he struggled with the new level of expectation on him & he arrived at the Crucible the following year with just one final appearance & a string of early defeats to his name.Despite this however & because of the enormous level of prizemoney available at the Crucible, he was still only a victory or two there form ending the season as world no.1. Not even Stuart's biggest fans could have suggested at the time that such a ranking was a fair reflection of current form

This again reared its head last month,when by virtue of his most recent world championship victory Mark Selby ascended to the top of the ranking again, much to the disgust of his predecessor Judd Trump. Now this one was slightly different, the last two seasons have seen the calendar chop & change,so prizemoney form the pre covid world can be lost without a like for like chance to stop the damage, but even allowing for that, can anyone really argue that considering the way he has dominated the last two seasons, that Trump isn't the worlds best player?

These are only a couple of examples & the world championship is at the extreme,but when things get back to normal & we have some of those big money tournaments in China again, there is a real danger things get tilted too far towards a certain events.

So whats the answer? 

Well for me I've always liked to idea of a more structured points system. So my proposal is we set the events in to four tiers. Now despite with I've said above I do believe that nothing should rival the world championship, so that would be the sole Tier One event, but the rest ,based on prestige would be divided up between the other three tiers.

Tier One -World Championship

Tier Two - eg. UK Championship, International Championship, China Open 

Tier Three -eg Home Nations events, British Open 

Tier Four -eg. Gibraltar Open, Shoot Out

The points would the be distributed as follows

                                      Tier One    Tier Two      Tier Three    Tier Four

Winner                           1500             1000                  750              600

Runner Up                     1000              750                   600              450

Semi Final                       750               600                   450              300

Last 8                               600               450                   300              150

Last 16                             450               300                   150              100

Last 32                             300               150                   100                50

Last 64                             150               100                     50                25

Last 128                              0                  0                        0                  0

*Two quick notes here,the points for the world championship qualifiers would have to be decided on which qualifying system is in use & places in the Cazoo series would still decided as now on prize money. Which tier each event in this series would hall in to would also have to be decided upon.

 The post covid landscape allows the opportunity to redraw the calendar & if its done properly with this system, it allows players a better opportunity to structure their seasons around the events they want to play in,with a view to peaking at the right times. A new calendar may be something I visit again in coming weeks.  

One potential drawback with this is where is the incentive for places to put on new events with bigger prize money? This is however where I see a real chance to shake things up,with events not coming up to scratch facing demotion. By this I mean an event must be held to a certain standard regardless of prizemoney om offer ,that is playing conditions, venue ,atmosphere. fans. The incentive is that events that meet these standards can be promoted up a tier. As years go by maybe a 5th tier could be introduced to accommodate more events based on this template.

So there you have it. My proposal to solve the ranking crisis. Please let me know what you think.