Post a reply

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby SnookerEd25

It hosted the World Matchplay at least once, I think. Certainly used to hold a lot of Boxing there - it’s on Barry Hearn’s manor.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby SnookerFan

Good job that I am finally going to give Milton Keynes a try in a couple of weeks, if they're moving the English Open.

Though will definitely check Brentwood out.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Prop

SnookerFan wrote:Good job that I am finally going to give Milton Keynes a try in a couple of weeks, if they're moving the English Open.

Though will definitely check Brentwood out.


Will you keep us posted with your deliberations?

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Iranu

SnookerFan wrote:Good job that I am finally going to give Milton Keynes a try in a couple of weeks, if they're moving the English Open.

Though will definitely check Brentwood out.

Well you say definitely...

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby SnookerFan

Iranu wrote:
SnookerFan wrote:Good job that I am finally going to give Milton Keynes a try in a couple of weeks, if they're moving the English Open.

Though will definitely check Brentwood out.

Well you say definitely...


I said I'd definitely check it out, didn't say I'd definitely go. <laugh>

A brief look tells me that there's very few hotels within walking distance, if any. That might knacker my plans.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby lhpirnie

Well it's great news for me, as I'm now living 30 mins away.

But the really important part of that story is that only 70+ players will be there. In other words the 5-day qualifier round has become a permanent thing. Because these Home Nations tournaments now take 12-13 days, it means there will be no space on the schedule for any events in China in 2022-23.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Juddernaut88

lhpirnie wrote:Well it's great news for me, as I'm now living 30 mins away.

But the really important part of that story is that only 70+ players will be there. In other words the 5-day qualifier round has become a permanent thing. Because these Home Nations tournaments now take 12-13 days, it means there will be no space on the schedule for any events in China in 2022-23.


That will be a joke. I was hoping the qualifiers for the home nations would be scrapped next season. We need to get the China events back.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby SnookerEd25

HappyCamper wrote:eric pickles used to be mp for brentwood.


This is the sort of irrelevant trivia that matters <ok>

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Iranu

lhpirnie wrote:Well it's great news for me, as I'm now living 30 mins away.

But the really important part of that story is that only 70+ players will be there. In other words the 5-day qualifier round has become a permanent thing. Because these Home Nations tournaments now take 12-13 days, it means there will be no space on the schedule for any events in China in 2022-23.

Shanghai Masters will be unaffected I guess, since it’s top 16 and their HN matches are heldover?

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby lhpirnie

Iranu wrote:
lhpirnie wrote:Well it's great news for me, as I'm now living 30 mins away.

But the really important part of that story is that only 70+ players will be there. In other words the 5-day qualifier round has become a permanent thing. Because these Home Nations tournaments now take 12-13 days, it means there will be no space on the schedule for any events in China in 2022-23.

Shanghai Masters will be unaffected I guess, since it’s top 16 and their HN matches are heldover?

No, what I meant was that with the Home Nations occupying around 50 days on the calendar, there literally is almost no space to include any of the Chinese events. I'm assuming the World Championship, UK Championship, Masters, British Open, Champion of Champions, the Cazoo Series and the European events are certainties. Basically WST have given up on China.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Iranu

lhpirnie wrote:No, what I meant was that with the Home Nations occupying around 50 days on the calendar, there literally is almost no space to include any of the Chinese events. I'm assuming the World Championship, UK Championship, Masters, British Open, Champion of Champions, the Cazoo Series and the European events are certainties. Basically WST have given up on China.

I know what you were saying but my point is, the Shanghai Masters can still take place during a Home Nations qualifier because the top 16 won’t be taking part in that.

I think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that WST have given up on China. The star of the season is Chinese, it’s the biggest market for snooker in the world, why would they give up on it when the entirety of the rest of the world is bending over backwards to please them?

We’ve got corporate giants like Disney bucking cutting mentions of homosexuality from their films in order to maintain the Chinese market but you think WST have said “buck it”?

We’re still in a period of transition. Do we even know that it’s WST’s decision and not China’s? Do we even know there has BEEN a decision?

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Juddernaut88

Iranu the point lhpirnie is making is spot on. There are a lot of big China tournaments. International championship, World Open, China Championship and China Open. The first 4 have generally been played during the first half of the season.
Now they may only play one of them in the first half of the season due to the silly introduction of qualifiers for the home nation events. China Open should be okay for the 2nd half of the season but it's a shame there's a chance we could be losing at least 3 major China events unless some adjustments are made.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Prop

Juddernaut88 wrote:Iranu the point lhpirnie is making is spot on. There are a lot of big China tournaments. International championship, World Open, China Championship and China Open. The first 4 have generally been played during the first half of the season.
Now they may only play one of them in the first half of the season due to the silly introduction of qualifiers for the home nation events. China Open should be okay for the 2nd half of the season but it's a shame there's a chance we could be losing at least 3 major China events unless some adjustments are made.


Are you sure that the Home Nations qualifiers were chosen over China? Or perhaps when it was ascertained that yet again it would be very difficult to stage the Chinese events, they realised they would yet again have gaps to fill, hence the qualifiers?

I don’t think WST have given up on China at all.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Iranu

Juddernaut88 wrote:Iranu the point lhpirnie is making is spot on. There are a lot of big China tournaments. International championship, World Open, China Championship and China Open. The first 4 have generally been played during the first half of the season.
Now they may only play one of them in the first half of the season due to the silly introduction of qualifiers for the home nation events. China Open should be okay for the 2nd half of the season but it's a shame there's a chance we could be losing at least 3 major China events unless some adjustments are made.

I understand all that. My issues with what he’s said are:

1) Saying there’s no space for any China events - as you say, the China Open should be fine. And the Shanghai Masters will be unaffected by qualifiers as they can take place concurrently

2) The suggestion that it means WST has “given up” on China - the evidence for this is slim at best and we don’t even know if, should there be fewer China tournaments next season, that’s WST’s decision or China’s.

It seems to me that LHPirnie takes any opportunity, no matter how spurious, to rubbish on WST and broadcasters’ ‘treatment’ of China and Chinese players.

He’s making a huge assumption based on an announcement for the English Open. We have no idea how spot on that assumption is or isn’t.

Even this season there were three weeks between the British Open and the English Open that could have held at least two tournaments in a “China leg”.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby lhpirnie

Iranu wrote:
Juddernaut88 wrote:Iranu the point lhpirnie is making is spot on. There are a lot of big China tournaments. International championship, World Open, China Championship and China Open. The first 4 have generally been played during the first half of the season.
Now they may only play one of them in the first half of the season due to the silly introduction of qualifiers for the home nation events. China Open should be okay for the 2nd half of the season but it's a shame there's a chance we could be losing at least 3 major China events unless some adjustments are made.

I understand all that. My issues with what he’s said are:

1) Saying there’s no space for any China events - as you say, the China Open should be fine. And the Shanghai Masters will be unaffected by qualifiers as they can take place concurrently

2) The suggestion that it means WST has “given up” on China - the evidence for this is slim at best and we don’t even know if, should there be fewer China tournaments next season, that’s WST’s decision or China’s.

It seems to me that LHPirnie takes any opportunity, no matter how spurious, to rubbish on WST and broadcasters’ ‘treatment’ of China and Chinese players.

He’s making a huge assumption based on an announcement for the English Open. We have no idea how spot on that assumption is or isn’t.

Even this season there were three weeks between the British Open and the English Open that could have held at least two tournaments in a “China leg”.

Everything you say is quite true!


But actually I would give WST a lot of praise for keeping things going during the pandemic. They have exceeded my expectations. Where I do have a bit of a problem is when they don't announce things explicitly, which have implications. The most obvious one is when they unleashed the British Open, but didn't mention the best-of-5 format (it was a footnote in the booking page). In this case, their announcement of Brentwood didn't say anything about the qualifiers. Did they expect anyone to notice? That's why I made the point so aggressively. Yeah, to say "given up on China" is an exaggeration, but from what I can work out from their (secretly planned) schedule, there can't be any events there for at least another 12 months. That has implications in terms of contracts expiring - the whole China thing will need a renegotiation and a relaunch.

In that sense, I don't blame WST for not discussing it in public - everything is still conditional after all. The main reason why they've made the announcement about Brentwood is because of twinning with a pool event. But it's reasonable to debate it on a snooker forum.

My worry now is about the dates and format of the World Championship - is best-of-11 now established for the first two rounds? As for WST's stated ambition of 'globalisation', I don't think it's enough just to have a few tournaments a year with later rounds held overseas but with qualifiers in the UK. That's a UK-based tour. Again, I would hope the future of snooker is a bit fairer - it has to be to make globalisation sustainable.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Iranu

lhpirnie wrote:Everything you say is quite true!


But actually I would give WST a lot of praise for keeping things going during the pandemic. They have exceeded my expectations. Where I do have a bit of a problem is when they don't announce things explicitly, which have implications. The most obvious one is when they unleashed the British Open, but didn't mention the best-of-5 format (it was a footnote in the booking page). In this case, their announcement of Brentwood didn't say anything about the qualifiers. Did they expect anyone to notice? That's why I made the point so aggressively. Yeah, to say "given up on China" is an exaggeration, but from what I can work out from their (secretly planned) schedule, there can't be any events there for at least another 12 months. That has implications in terms of contracts expiring - the whole China thing will need a renegotiation and a relaunch.

In that sense, I don't blame WST for not discussing it in public - everything is still conditional after all. The main reason why they've made the announcement about Brentwood is because of twinning with a pool event. But it's reasonable to debate it on a snooker forum.

My worry now is about the dates and format of the World Championship - is best-of-11 now established for the first two rounds? As for WST's stated ambition of 'globalisation', I don't think it's enough just to have a few tournaments a year with later rounds held overseas but with qualifiers in the UK. That's a UK-based tour. Again, I would hope the future of snooker is a bit fairer - it has to be to make globalisation sustainable.

WST definitely have a transparency issue. Things like the Peter Lines incident and the lack of public update are another example.

Re: the Brentwood announcement, I reckon (my turn to make an assumption) they figured, well hardcore fans will notice the number and put two and two together, and non-hardcore fans won’t care. Which in fairness is probably broadly accurate.

I don’t think WST have any obligation to make the planning of their schedule public, to be fair. And again you’re assuming the lack of China tournaments in the schedule is WST’s choice, which we simply don’t know - and I would argue is unlikely given China’s value to the tour.

I would say that pre-pandemic WST had more than “a few” tournaments ‘overseas’ (i.e. outside of UK and Ireland) and they’re I think swiftly reintroducing that this season. I agree about qualifiers, though. Especially the Worlds. A return to bo19 qualifiers is essential.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby lhpirnie

Iranu wrote:...
I don’t think WST have any obligation to make the planning of their schedule public, to be fair. And again you’re assuming the lack of China tournaments in the schedule is WST’s choice, which we simply don’t know - and I would argue is unlikely given China’s value to the tour.
...

Sure, they can't make their schedule plans public, although parts have leaked out. But I'm certainly not blaming WST for the demise of the China events. Most likely, CBSA couldn't give them the assurances they needed because of China's covid travel restrictions, currently is a 3-week isolation in a secured hotel. All I am saying is that they must have made that decision some time ago, probably before Christmas.


I really hope they can retain enough flexibility to be able to introduce events mid-season, as indeed they did with the Turkish Masters. But I also know that it's pretty tough to have flexible venue bookings.

I now realise what you meant about the Shanghai Masters. Yes, the most likely first event back would be a smaller-scale invitational event. It's quite possible that I will be in Shanghai at the time, assuming covid restrictions are relaxed somewhat...

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Iranu

Pink Ball wrote:I don’t understand snooker’s aversion to major cities. When last did we have a tournament in Birmingham? Liverpool? Leeds? Even Manchester has rarely had much shot at it.

Every part of the country that isn’t Birmingham has an aversion to Birmingham.

More seriously, it must be a cost issue. Rather get somewhere close to a major city (Crawley, Wolves, Telford etc) than stump up the cash for a major city itself.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby lhpirnie

Pink Ball wrote:I don’t understand snooker’s aversion to major cities. When last did we have a tournament in Birmingham? Liverpool? Leeds? Even Manchester has rarely had much shot at it.

The venues cost a lot more. It's probably as simple as that.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby Prop

lhpirnie wrote:
Pink Ball wrote:I don’t understand snooker’s aversion to major cities. When last did we have a tournament in Birmingham? Liverpool? Leeds? Even Manchester has rarely had much shot at it.

The venues cost a lot more. It's probably as simple as that.


It’s definitely as simple as that. We’re a far cry from the so called golden years of tobacco sponsorship and all the money that brought it. Not just that, but part of the reason Hearn was so successful in picking snooker up off the floor was cutting certain costs. That doesn’t look like changing.

Re: The English Open moves to Brentwood?

Postby SnookerFan

I always thought that Telford was a good idea in theory.

Near Birmingham. Near Cardiff. But still felt in the middle of nowhere, so it probably would been a fraction of the price.

As a motorway town there was a lot of hotels. I got a really good one for cheap one year.

The downside was that it was a marmite venue that nobody wanted to go to. And not marketed enough that people knew it was there.