UK Championship Allen's win & other things.

 Mark Allen last night added a second Triple Crown title to his cv ,producing a stunning comeback to beat Ding Junhui 10-7 and claim the 2022 UK Championship.

At one stage in the afternoon it had looked like we might be in for an early evening as Ding, playing some beautiful snooker, stormed in to a 6-1,but the hallmark of Allen this week has been a tenacity & determination  to dig out a result when things looked bleak & that's what we saw again here. 

Coming out in the evening Allen would have been looking at winning the first mini session to give himself a chance, but he did even better than that and went to the mid session interval having leveled up at 6-6. From here & despite a century from Ding, there looked only one winner. So it proved as Allen won a lengthy 17th frame to claim a famous win.

This was Allen's second title from three ranking finals this season & the way he is competing at the moment, it'd be a brave man to say its going to be his last. |For Ding, although the week ultimately ended in failure, he can look back at great run here that hopefully propels him back up the rankings again. A fully confident Ding is a joy to watch on the table and a potential winner wherever he cues up.

This match  of course came at the end of fortnight that saw the UK Championship reclaim its identity as one of the sports premier tournaments. The years of the flat 128 draw had done nothing for the event except make it feel rushed and hard to follow. Now restored to a "World Championship model" it has the feel of a proper event again. The qualifying rounds were made freely available & like we see in Sheffield in April, they felt like a tournament in and of themselves. The "judgement day" multi table coverage is always a great treat.

Personally I'd love to see them go one step further & make Quarters & Semi finals best of 17's again. This would only require two morning sessions for the Last 32.Some would argue that having the two semi finals being played simultaneously would be a bad thing. but I think it's a sacrifice worth making to bring us more multi session matches. If you don't do it in the second biggest tournament then where?

When I'm at it I want to buck the common social media trend & say how much once again I enjoyed the BBC coverage.  I know we a spoiled with the amount of snooker we see for free on tv, but I still think noone does it better than the Beeb. Now if only they can be persuaded to keep John Virgo in the commentary box beyond  this season, as he proved yet again this week that he is still the greatest voice in the game.

Finally once again to salute our champion. Mark Allen embarked on some major lifestyle changes during the summer, not just for his snooker, but for his general wellbeing. Its is wonderful to see him getting his just rewards. For him that's 2/3rds of the Triple Crown now completed. Can he add the final 1/3rd on the first Monday of May next year? You couldn't bet against it.

Champion of Champions A few take aways

 Ronnie O'Sullivan last night claimed the Champion of Champions title for a forth time with a 10-6 victory over Judd Trump.

Ronnie started the stronger & looked to be heading towards an easy win when he extended hid lead to five frames at 6-1.A 147 in the next sparked Judd into life & when in the evening he got back within one at 7-6, it looked like we were in for a dramatic finish. Ronnie however had other ideas & he stretched away again after the mid session interval to seal his second title of the season.

So what did we learn from the tournament as a whole? Well starting with the runner up, after a relatively quiet couple of seasons by his standards, Judd looked to be getting back to his very best here. Strange as it sounds, I think he played a lot better this week  than he did last season when he won the title. His victories over Allen & Selby should serve notice that when it comes to deciding the big ones, he's going to be right there in the mix.

Predicting success in sport of course is a dangerous game, but I would be shocked if we don't see Mark Selby back in the winners enclosure sooner rather than later. His personal battles over the last year have been well documented, but he continues to show signs of his game recovering & I just get the feeling that one week with a decent tailwind will see him hold a trophy aloft again.

The enigma that is Fan Zhengyi was the story early in the week. Since he came from nowhere to win the European Masters at the start of the year, he quickly disappeared back there as he struggled to get  wins on the board. Coming here he'd only managed two victories all season, but doubled that tally in one day here with two deciding frame wins over  Neil Robertson (4-3) & Ryan Day (6-5) He couldn't quite reproduce these heroics in the semi final against Ronnie, but it showed once again that there are some very talented young players on the tour who on their day are a match for anyone, they just need to make it their day on a more consistent basis.

Off the table it was Judd Trump (33) again making the headlines as the self appointed voice of the younger generation. I jest here of course, but to be fair to Judd, it is good to see him with a genuine interest in trying to improve the game. A lot of his ideas over the years I would disagree with, but making a day out at a snooker tournament more of an event off the table, with things taking place in the venue is certainly something that should be looked at. Once you discover what a wonderful game this is you are hooked, the key for me in achieving this is to grow the feel good factor of attending snooker tournaments.

This brings me on to the tournament itself. This is a Matchroom promoted event & as such they can do what they like, but I just feel the presentation here was not fitting for a tournament with the grand title of "Champion of Champions". The Polo shirts (albeit better than last years) still make it look more like a pool tournament, the high sided sponsor screen around the perimeter & the colour scheme made the whole thing on screen seem a bit tacky. The poor attendance until the second half of the week only added to the sense of a tournament taking place in an empty warehouse. As I said above, the secret to our sport growing is properly showing off the one we have, that must not be done by cheapening it.

Anyway on we go to the UK Championship, which is on earlier this year to avoid a clash with the World Cup. Ronnie will go there in search of an eighth UK title & one thing that was shown here again last week was the undeniable fact that, when Ronnie is on it ,there is still no-one who can touch him.