Gareth Allen is a talented 23 year old Welsh amateur snooker player with ambitions to make it onto the main professional snooker tour. Real life has so far got in the way of his snooker playing ambitions, but with the advent of the PTCs and sponsorship courtesy of Sport Wales he has taken the plunge for a once in a lifetime crack at the big time.
On the Friday when Ronnie was playing I had little peep and there were only about 15 people watching. I just think it needed to be promoted a bit more in Ireland. I’m surprised they haven’t got a ranking event in Ireland to be honest, there are a lot of good players over there and Killarney is a good venue.
Gloucester’s Michael Wasley is yet another promising young amateur hoping to gain a place on the main tour and launch his snooker career. He is based right next to the South West Snooker Academy and has been part of the set up since inception, both working and practicing there. I caught up with him during PTC7 to find out how he came to be in his current position.
Everyone feels pressure, but I like pressure. It’s what we all play snooker for at the end of the day. If you can’t handle the pressure then you’re not going to be a really good snooker player. But yeah I guess I have got a bit of bottle and if you’ve got it then that’s a good thing I guess!
I know they’re all big matches but this was a big match for me. Instead of a seasoned pro in round 1, I had a rookie and he’s young. I knew he was going to be attacking and so am I but early on it just went weird, I didn’t really know what was happening, I was getting dragged in to the way he plays!
You see guys like John Higgins and one minute they’re playing in front of 5000 people and the next they’re playing in front of a referee. You know, I’m not successful like John or Ronnie but I’ve been there a long time and I’ve played in front of 3 or 4,000 people. I can’t get myself up for it to play in those booths.
We played on table 1 with the streaming set up so the lights were really bright which took a bit of getting used to. When I finished low on the black, the light reflecting off the black made it look totally different to what I’m used to and they were so bright I couldn’t see the pocket I was aiming at!
It was such a good environment to play in with all the people watching. It was hard as well because there’s a lot going on around you, like one time Higgins was playing on the end table and they were going mad clapping and whistling, and you’ve always got people moving around in the crowd, but you’ve just got to get used to it.
Just before I played Tony Knowles he told me that the winner plays tomorrow at 3pm against Stephen Lee. It probably wasn’t the best conversation to have just before you play, especially because Stephen is one of the players I didn’t want to draw!
The tournaments seem to be heading towards the quicker matches with the Shootout and Premier League and shorter formats, and I don’t think a lot of them will be able to cope. It suits the new attacking modern day player.