#26 A Whole Different Ball Game
19/08/20 11:26
‘I have to say, I don’t think you’re the ideal person to write a review of the TV coverage of the snooker world championship.’
That, ladies and gentlemen, was an actual text I received from my actual dad. Let’s prove him wrong, shall we? I am UP FOR THIS.
I have long been an enthusiastic supporter of the sport
Growing up in Sheffield, snooker was in my blood
Not since Dennis Taylor won the World Championship in 1985 has
When I was a child, the snooker was always on. That’s how I remember it, anyway; the baize table the backdrop to my early years. Pretty sure I was watching when Cliff Thorburn made his 147, though given that I was only five at the time, it’s unlikely. But my dad’s dedication to every Crucible encounter means that I must have absorbed a fair amount of match play over the years. More than enough to consider myself an expert.
Mostly, I find snooker utterly tedious. Two guys dressed as magicians waving sticks around, the whispery commentary (only works when it’s Andrew Cotter observing Mabel and Olive), old men nodding off in the audience… It’s not a sport; more a bizarre British ceremonial, like Black Rod or maypole dancing. There’s absolutely no way I would have been interested in watching the World Championship, but then something happened that changed everything. I saw THAT Ronnie O’Sullivan interview.
In case you didn’t catch it, I suggest you google it right away because it’s a belter. After beating Ding Junhui to reach the quarter finals, Ronnie said that the young players coming into the game are so bad that he would need to lose an arm and a leg to fall out of the top 50. He actually said that, asserting his superiority with the assurance of a shitfaced dad in the Arsenal Tavern insisting Wenger should have stayed. You could almost hear jaws dropping off-camera - the arrogance, lack of sportsmanship or basic courtesy - as he turned the traditional post-match interview on its head. Instead of a gentlemen’s elbow bump, he gave the finger. I LOVED IT.
My dad and I are now involved in a protracted text exchange, debating whether or not Ronnie is an arsehole. He says he is, and I say he is as well, but the difference is that I’d rather Ronnie’s arsehole than some other crap player’s tepid lip service. It’s just so refreshing and unexpected. AND HE’S RIGHT. He is the best; why sugar-coat it? Anyway, now there’s a rock star on the rampage, I was back in the room re snooker, and so, on Friday night, we settled down to watch his semi-final with Mark Selby.
First, we had to sit through another semi between Kyren Wilson and Anthony McGill. The commentators (one was John Parrott - not seen him since I was listening to Now That’s What I Call Music 10!) described it as one of the most dramatic they’d ever seen. I have to respectfully disagree. It was basically 4870 safety shots – the snooker equivalent of Nick Park shooting a Wallace and Gromit sequence. Move it a little bit. Move it a little bit more. Move it back a bit. The empty seats suggested everyone had got bored and gone to the pub. Like the football, we hear the canned response of onlookers – in the Premier League, you get rowdy, indistinct bellowing, but, in keeping with the more sedate nature of snooker, here you get polite clapping. For some reason, fake restrained applause is even more ridiculous than fake chanting. Particularly when it’s applauding a bloke who just edged the pink an inch to the left. In the end, Kyren Wilson won by accidentally potting the green. Being a gentleman, he apologised - in fact, he was so mortified by his fluked faux pas that in the aftermath chat, he was close to tears. It’s fair to say he wasn’t taught at the O’Sullivan School of Sportsmanship. ‘It’s a cruel game,’ he said. He’s not wrong. Now piss off, and let the big boys play.
O’Sullivan and Selby look pretty similar to me, and I would have found it hard to tell them apart were it not for their respective techniques. Selby plays snooker like a snooker player. O’Sullivan plays like a drunk tennis ace, smashing it out the park. Guess which is more fun to watch? Mark’s opening shot was described by the commentators as ‘a bit weird’. It was - it was also deadly dull. My note from that point read ‘are we going to have to sit here through all of this?’ I must admit that I got distracted, and started Rightmoving cottages in Hay-on-Wye. But, just as I found a nice converted barn near Llandrindod Wells, Ronnie suddenly woke up and decided to win, bashing the billiards with the reckless abandon of a toddler in a ball pit.
Now, that is exactly how I play snooker, except he actually pots stuff. One after another: pop, pop, pop. His opponent was reduced to staring stonily ahead, no doubt thinking of ways to help Ronnie lose an arm. I felt sorry for Mark’s wife, the sole live witness, up in the gods. Where was Ronnie’s girlfriend, Laila Rouass? No sign of her; I can only assume he told her not to bother. In one of the penultimate frames, Gunner O’Sullivan got a break of 138 in seven minutes, while Static Selby sat like a statue. I was punching the air, the Grade II listed barn forgotten. The guy’s a fucking machine – but a really edgy machine, like the King of Bahrain’s ‘robot bodyguard’. He wasn’t playing against Selby at all; it was a solo performance, and a virtuoso one at that.
People in sport often offer mundane soundbites, without moving any muscles in their faces when they talk, just droning into the mic until you forget whether they won or lost. I guess you need that kind of mentality to make it – that is, a level of focus that turns you into an automaton. But Ronnie’s retained a kind of perversity (arseholery) that allows him to wax lyrical about #cueaction afterwards, refusing to engage in platitudes. In an age where so many – actors, athletes, pop stars, politicians – seem to be sticking to the same old scripts, I found it a breath of fresh air. Or rather, an Alex Higgins mid-frame drag on a fag.
Mike Watterson and his wife Carol had the inspired idea of staging the Championship at the Crucible in 1977, exploiting the sport’s tension and theatricality. Ronnie O’Sullivan is snooker’s Hamlet – hogging the best lines, monopolising the stage, accusing the other players, muscling his way to the front for the biggest bow, and reducing everyone else to silence. Yes, he’s an arsehole, but he’s also the star. Alas, poor Mark didn’t get a look-in.
That, ladies and gentlemen, was an actual text I received from my actual dad. Let’s prove him wrong, shall we? I am UP FOR THIS.
When I was a child, the snooker was always on. That’s how I remember it, anyway; the baize table the backdrop to my early years. Pretty sure I was watching when Cliff Thorburn made his 147, though given that I was only five at the time, it’s unlikely. But my dad’s dedication to every Crucible encounter means that I must have absorbed a fair amount of match play over the years. More than enough to consider myself an expert.
Mostly, I find snooker utterly tedious. Two guys dressed as magicians waving sticks around, the whispery commentary (only works when it’s Andrew Cotter observing Mabel and Olive), old men nodding off in the audience… It’s not a sport; more a bizarre British ceremonial, like Black Rod or maypole dancing. There’s absolutely no way I would have been interested in watching the World Championship, but then something happened that changed everything. I saw THAT Ronnie O’Sullivan interview.
In case you didn’t catch it, I suggest you google it right away because it’s a belter. After beating Ding Junhui to reach the quarter finals, Ronnie said that the young players coming into the game are so bad that he would need to lose an arm and a leg to fall out of the top 50. He actually said that, asserting his superiority with the assurance of a shitfaced dad in the Arsenal Tavern insisting Wenger should have stayed. You could almost hear jaws dropping off-camera - the arrogance, lack of sportsmanship or basic courtesy - as he turned the traditional post-match interview on its head. Instead of a gentlemen’s elbow bump, he gave the finger. I LOVED IT.
My dad and I are now involved in a protracted text exchange, debating whether or not Ronnie is an arsehole. He says he is, and I say he is as well, but the difference is that I’d rather Ronnie’s arsehole than some other crap player’s tepid lip service. It’s just so refreshing and unexpected. AND HE’S RIGHT. He is the best; why sugar-coat it? Anyway, now there’s a rock star on the rampage, I was back in the room re snooker, and so, on Friday night, we settled down to watch his semi-final with Mark Selby.
First, we had to sit through another semi between Kyren Wilson and Anthony McGill. The commentators (one was John Parrott - not seen him since I was listening to Now That’s What I Call Music 10!) described it as one of the most dramatic they’d ever seen. I have to respectfully disagree. It was basically 4870 safety shots – the snooker equivalent of Nick Park shooting a Wallace and Gromit sequence. Move it a little bit. Move it a little bit more. Move it back a bit. The empty seats suggested everyone had got bored and gone to the pub. Like the football, we hear the canned response of onlookers – in the Premier League, you get rowdy, indistinct bellowing, but, in keeping with the more sedate nature of snooker, here you get polite clapping. For some reason, fake restrained applause is even more ridiculous than fake chanting. Particularly when it’s applauding a bloke who just edged the pink an inch to the left. In the end, Kyren Wilson won by accidentally potting the green. Being a gentleman, he apologised - in fact, he was so mortified by his fluked faux pas that in the aftermath chat, he was close to tears. It’s fair to say he wasn’t taught at the O’Sullivan School of Sportsmanship. ‘It’s a cruel game,’ he said. He’s not wrong. Now piss off, and let the big boys play.
O’Sullivan and Selby look pretty similar to me, and I would have found it hard to tell them apart were it not for their respective techniques. Selby plays snooker like a snooker player. O’Sullivan plays like a drunk tennis ace, smashing it out the park. Guess which is more fun to watch? Mark’s opening shot was described by the commentators as ‘a bit weird’. It was - it was also deadly dull. My note from that point read ‘are we going to have to sit here through all of this?’ I must admit that I got distracted, and started Rightmoving cottages in Hay-on-Wye. But, just as I found a nice converted barn near Llandrindod Wells, Ronnie suddenly woke up and decided to win, bashing the billiards with the reckless abandon of a toddler in a ball pit.
Now, that is exactly how I play snooker, except he actually pots stuff. One after another: pop, pop, pop. His opponent was reduced to staring stonily ahead, no doubt thinking of ways to help Ronnie lose an arm. I felt sorry for Mark’s wife, the sole live witness, up in the gods. Where was Ronnie’s girlfriend, Laila Rouass? No sign of her; I can only assume he told her not to bother. In one of the penultimate frames, Gunner O’Sullivan got a break of 138 in seven minutes, while Static Selby sat like a statue. I was punching the air, the Grade II listed barn forgotten. The guy’s a fucking machine – but a really edgy machine, like the King of Bahrain’s ‘robot bodyguard’. He wasn’t playing against Selby at all; it was a solo performance, and a virtuoso one at that.
People in sport often offer mundane soundbites, without moving any muscles in their faces when they talk, just droning into the mic until you forget whether they won or lost. I guess you need that kind of mentality to make it – that is, a level of focus that turns you into an automaton. But Ronnie’s retained a kind of perversity (arseholery) that allows him to wax lyrical about #cueaction afterwards, refusing to engage in platitudes. In an age where so many – actors, athletes, pop stars, politicians – seem to be sticking to the same old scripts, I found it a breath of fresh air. Or rather, an Alex Higgins mid-frame drag on a fag.
Mike Watterson and his wife Carol had the inspired idea of staging the Championship at the Crucible in 1977, exploiting the sport’s tension and theatricality. Ronnie O’Sullivan is snooker’s Hamlet – hogging the best lines, monopolising the stage, accusing the other players, muscling his way to the front for the biggest bow, and reducing everyone else to silence. Yes, he’s an arsehole, but he’s also the star. Alas, poor Mark didn’t get a look-in.
- Snooker World Championship, BBC Sport
