Just glad I'm resting so I ain't ten beers deep tomorrow by 19:00 and can actually enjoy it.
Just glad I'm resting so I ain't ten beers deep tomorrow by 19:00 and can actually enjoy it.
Looking at the draw, Trump may have the easiest route to the final in crucible history.
Fuck off, UEFA.
I'm gonna have to iplayer this, looking tasty.
O'Sullivan's playing like an absolute madman.
He's been shit, but Selby getting through earlier has probably put paid to any chance he had of getting to the final.
What a shambolic sequence that was.
All going to pot in the other game as well.
Neil Robertson really is getting a little too old to be still dying his hair.
Left it at 1-2 yesterday, snuck in a frame for 1-3 at HT and BBC had removed it from iplayer by FT. Just caught highlights now. What's the timings for the rest? 8 frame at 14:30 tonight and then finish at 19:00 tomorrow?
*McGill bitches to the ref about Clarke standing in his eyeline*
Jason Mohammed: "Let's not sensationalise this"
Also Jason Mohammed, the same sentence: "but these are extraordinary scenes!!!"
Snooker players aren't have a lot of snippy twats.
Look at the wee angry Scot
As if Martin Gould is coming out to The Game.
Was it in here I saw somebody else make a comment about him being a wrong'un? Has he been up to no good in the past?
Plotting every detail as he (inevitably) sits in his seat for long periods.
The frame he finally won yesterday was a fairly phenomenal effort seeing as he was out of position on virtually every shot. No word of a lie one of the best 15 breaks you'll ever see.
Just realised I'm the same age as him. Good god.
Ronnie's interview
This McGill/Clarke game is tragic.
The latter seems an absolute spanner.
That's quality.
Last edited by Giggles; 10-08-2020 at 08:29 AM.
I haven't seen him so happy.
It was amazing. It did pick up a little but that last frame was so error strewn and yeah, McGill was funny being so visibly angered by any small slice of luck that didn't go his way. Clarke looked suicidal towards the end, I kind of felt bad for him.
That sort of needle is exactly what the sport needs.
Ronnie is right about the standard, and I can't see how it'll ever pick up again given snooker halls have all been bulldozed since the 80s when those players were teenagers.
It's not massively cheap to play either at any of the snooker halls I'm aware of near me. There are days when I'm bored enough that I'd quite happily go along and fart about by myself on a table for a few hours but the hourly rates soon pile up.
It was already waning, but the smoking ban put the final nail in the coffin.
The one I used to play at is now new build flats going for £350,000 each, and that's in a shit piece of land behind a reservoir.
The guy who used to run it is now a sad-looking member of staff at the nearby pub, which has now tarted itself up into a gastropub selling lid pies for £16.85.
I'm about to hit my local gaff up daily during the next 3 weeks but Ian is right, costs make it too prohibitive for your common man where they do survive. Plus, they need more bishes and mixed race urban youth.
How much is it at yours out of curiosity?
I think mine is about £8 an hour for a snooker table which just feels like a ripoff.
I spent most of university in one that was constantly rammed with 20 full size tables and 8 US pool ones. It's a complex of takeaways now.
Back in Liverpool there didn't used to be one that was really reachable for teenage me. Then a Rileys opened up in a 10 minute walk away and it was great. The Snooker tables weren't the best but you actually had some to play on. A fair few US and English pool tables in there too. Wasn't bad price wise.
Then I moved here and there again wasn't really one until another Rileys opened. But that has since closed down and re-opened under a new name a bout 4-5 times now. I think the virus has killed off this incarnation of it too. When that's not open there just really isn't anywhere to play. My cue has been sat gathering dust for a while now.
We used to have 3 snooker places and they're all gone now. One is a gym, one flats and the other offices.
We barely even have pubs with pool tables anymore. There was a pool table in one of the sports bars in town but they got rid of it to get a shuffleboard table in.
Yeah I dunno when I last went to a pub that had a pool table. If I want pool or snooker has to be a place dedicated to it.
Kurt "The Viking" Maflin.
Because he's of scandi descent, you see. How desperately original.
Anthony McGill meanwhile just got called "The Tartan Nugget." The fuck even is that.
Would lol if O'Sullivan ends up out.
This might sound a bit fanboy, but Williams, while playing well has had some serious run of the ball here.
That was a cracking break.
Ronnie looks in full on wanker body language mode again.
O'Sullivan at his best is amazing to watch but he's also an insufferable twat who I find it impossible to root for.
Nah, I like him. You don't get many sportsmen who openly love the sport but vocally and visibly hate the baggage that comes with being the best at it.
There used to be a nice selection of books on the shelves at that pub - old encyclopedias, guides to moths and butterflies - and, on the walls, artful watercolours of local landmarks. Now the shelves are gone, the walls are red, and you get pints brought to your table by the aesthetic cream of the local graduate failures (female). The male ones all work at the nearby gym complex which is built entirely of glass, so much so that you can be walking down the street fifty yards away and look into the whites of their eyes as their dreams slide sweatily off cross-trainers.
I think it's just implicit now.
I suppose that's where all the disaffected youth go these days - to the gym to get pumped full of steroids.
Might explain how our youth is overpowering adults from other countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53722531
In response to O'Sullivan's comments Steve Davis (who is a dreadful pundit btw) said this:
They're not raw, they're just shit. I'd have had him down for early 20s, but a quick Google shows me that Jack Lisowski is so old he's not even young enough to be my son. Twenty-fucking-Nine.
"Wait until these young players are in their mid-thirties before you make a judgement on them. The likes of Jack Lisowski and Zhao Xintong are talented but effectively raw compared to John Higgins and Ronnie O'Sullivan."
He's been a professional for over 10 years now and made just over seven hundred grand. When you factor in all the travel/hotels and whatever tax you have to pay on that he's probably not doing what could even be described as 'well', in any walk of life. No idea how he's number 11 in the world either. He's made one final from seventeen ranking events this season, and that's it. Not even a quarter-final anywhere else in sight.
Then you look at Zhao Xintong, who is 23. Four years as a professional and he hasn't even been good enough to keep his tour card for the duration of his short career without going to Q school to get it back. One semi-final, two quarter-finals and under two hundred grand made in prize money to date. If he lives in China and has to fly over here every time he's probably barely earning enough to be making a living.
If these two are the best response to Ronnie's comments then it's probably even worse than he made out.
When I think about top talent that's come through, I can only name Ding and Trump.
Surely, Yan the Man > X-Factor, why's The Golden Nugget omitted him?
Also, Ian, ours was about £6 per hour. Managed to squeeze in 2 frames in just under 3 hours. 53-40 and 70-38 with a highest break of 8 for both players. Looking to spend 1000 hours and manage a 3-ball break.
Last time I went I managed a break of about 13 and felt like a fucking king.