Iranu wrote:Dan-cat wrote:Jester82 wrote:Young folks do not have the attention span for Snooker. With Darts you can drink yourself to death and behave obnoxiously, while Snooker is more gentle and worldly. To some it might seem almost dull.
You don't see fighting like you do in the football stadium, flip a birdie and what not. And there is no real controversy in Snooker beyond sb. wearing his bow tie incorrectly. It does not make any headlines. And the players who participate aren't any interesting characters when you walk around looking like a penguin.
It's true - smart phones / the internet have killed attention spans.
I think this is bullocks, personally. It’s not that attention spans are shorter, it’s that there are a million more things competing for that attention.
The lack of characters is also nonsense. 80s nostalgia vastly overestimates how much players back then showed personality - we only see the highlights now. The winks, the jokes. You could easily put together similar highlight reels from any decade since.
Check out an interview from Ronnie, MJW, Gilbert, even the likes of Lisowski and you’ll see there are loads of characters. Follow their Twitters and you’ll see it even more.
buck, Yan Bingtao speaks limited English but when asked what he’d buy with his Masters winnings his reply was a Louis Vuitton handbag for his girlfriend. A funny response from a guy who hasn’t even mastered the language.
No, they don't have the attention span. They try to introduce digital learning in schools although studies have revealed the systematic disadvantage compared to conventional learning.
Smartphones make you dependent, addictive and prove to be killers of meaningful relationships with fellow human beings. Made to connect us with each other they have made us more lonely. So have facebook and twitter.
I do not engage in any nostaliga as to the people around the snooker tables back then, all I can say is that the Davis lot wouldn't have attracted me to the sport either in terms of personality. Alex Higgins ok, he was the opposite, a bum without manners, funny at times, embarassing at others, yet a significant and exciting player. He might be the only 'badass' type in the Snooker World that ever existed.
Besides, we don't know much about the players today.
And Snooker is not an easy game like football, even bad players can do well in football, but Snooker doesn't allow for errors. If you don't put the balls away it is really frustrating whereas football people don't care because you don't need to score, you can just pass the ball along. Snooker is very individual and requires incredible skill to be a proper player.
@Mantorok
Security is of general importance in England, it's no wonder you have to let your trousers down before entering the darts arena.
A good chap of mine said Darts was a an excuse for excessive beer and hooch consumption.
They have already shortened the game. When Reardon was an active player, games were much longer without the drama and spectacle we had from Higgins, Willo, ROS and the lot in the late nineties and early 2000s.
The game has accelerated a lot over the time for the better I would say with the appearances of young guys like Trump or Bingtao.
The popularity of a particular sport has a lot to do with how many people practice said sport. Football has been No. 1 for decades with no second close. Cricket is conservative and complicated therefore out of question for many. Finally Snooker games need perseverance most of all, on and off the table.
Passionate lobbyists and representatives for the sport.