Mark Allen disses World Snooker

https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/28/mark-all ... 55813/amp/

Agree/disagree?

Everything said in that article from both Allen and Ferguson seem fairly reasonable.

you only start to get your teeth into the snooker season from the Champion of Champions to the World Championship

so from the October - May period which is the best period

but ofc as a player it sucks there's nothing to play

Remember when some players used to complain that there was too much snooker?

It is not about playing more or less, it is about money.

The issue is not having the China events. That's a huge blow. World Snooker have thought by having a long championship league in the beginning of the season solves the issue along with qualifiers for the home nations events but it has made the calendar certainly for the first few months of the season worse.

Valid complaints from Mark Allen.

The calendar could be improved, for example, if the qualifiers for the four home events and British Open were replaced by standalone ranking events even if they were paying say half total prize money of a main event and were best of 7s throughout. Remember the PTCs?

As far as I can see, the only barriers to holding an event in China are the costs and the quarantine requirements.
Although flights are incredibly expensive at the moment, I can't imagine that barrier being insurmountable, so it's really just the willingness of the players to go through quarantine. 10 days (7+3).
And as all the winter olymipians were OK with 14 days, it seems to come down to snooker players being prima donnas...

Juddernaut88 wrote:The issue is not having the China events. That's a huge blow. World Snooker have thought by having a long championship league in the beginning of the season solves the issue along with qualifiers for the home nations events but it has made the calendar certainly for the first few months of the season worse.

Yes, top-16 players have their 'qualifier' matches held over, so there hasn't been much for them so far. The Summer Championship League only comprises 1-3 days' play for each player. The recent NI Open qualifiers were played with only 2 tables, even though the new limit is 4. There's a sense they are trying to spread everything as thin as possible to maximise playing days.


Mark Allen says he plans to enter some pool events. Perhaps that's the real agenda - starve snooker and ultimately replace it with pool. These pool events do seem to have been well-planned to exploit the gaps, as if they had inside knowledge of WST's schedule.

chengdufan wrote:As far as I can see, the only barriers to holding an event in China are the costs and the quarantine requirements.
Although flights are incredibly expensive at the moment, I can't imagine that barrier being insurmountable, so it's really just the willingness of the players to go through quarantine. 10 days (7+3).
And as all the winter olymipians were OK with 14 days, it seems to come down to snooker players being prima donnas...

From how both Allen and Ferguson speak about it, it’s not the players’ decision.

Also I imagine the Olympians would be more easily able to plan how long they’d be there - even if they don’t make it through to finals or whatever would they stay in the Village until the closing ceremony? Can’t remember how that works tbh. I’d imagine most Olympians’ travel would be funded as well?

Going through 10 days of quarantine and expensive flights for potentially a few hours in a match is a bit different to a couple of weeks, I guess.

A way around it would be having a block of China tournaments in a row I guess. But even then it’s not like the UK where you can get pretty much anywhere within a few hours on a train.

gninnur karona wrote:Valid complaints from Mark Allen.

The calendar could be improved, for example, if the qualifiers for the four home events and British Open were replaced by standalone ranking events even if they were paying say half total prize money of a main event and were best of 7s throughout. Remember the PTCs?

Ferguson says they can’t just organise new tournaments on dates where existing tournaments might happen, which seems fair enough.

I'm told that the organisers usually pay for flights and hotels for China events

I can see where Allen is coming from and WST haven't shown much imagination in how the season is done but the Chinese events are near impossible to replace. The tour is already at saturation point in Britain, mainland Europe isn't really strong enough to hold more tournaments and the likes of Thailand, India, Brazil and Australia had tournaments that didn't last. They have managed to create the Turkish Masters and British Open which at least covers some of the lost events. They could have tried one tournament in China early in the season but even that would be very difficult.

chengdufan wrote:I'm told that the organisers usually pay for flights and hotels for China events

That suggests it’s even more out of the players’ hands then, no?

Basicly whats missing is the old PTC whitch had June to September jam packed.
'
Facts are there's 16 Ranking Titles Champion of Champions and Masters Snooker season traditionally doesn't start until late September Early October so anything before that is a bonus. players been spoilt but because of chinas stupidity over Covid-19 a lot of tournaments are missing and with it a lot of money nothing WST Can do about it apart from trying new country but then you cant drop those countries when China re-enters common sense. But good luck tying to replace chinas cash with anywhere else.

I don't understand why they don't set up some temporary PTC events.

If and when China comes back and we're allowed to have tournaments there again, we can then get shot of the PTCs a lot easier than we could a proper ranking event.

The PTCs might not be the greatest thing to watch ever, but they still would serve some purposes. Mainly, and most importantly at the moment, it gives players playing opportunities when there isn't any other tournaments going on. Even amateur players.

And as minor as they are, they'd be a damn site more interesting than the Championshit League. Which is just awful.

You'd only need to find a venue that would host it for a few days at a time, rather than a full week. Leicester seems to have hosted a lot of qualifiers recently. Milton Keynes always seems up for it. I am sure they could find somewhere willing to host extra snooker for a few days at a time.

It's not ideal, but it'd give us something in what's been a pretty barren start to the season.

SnookerFan wrote:I don't understand why they don't set up some temporary PTC events.

If and when China comes back and we're allowed to have tournaments there again, we can then get shot of the PTCs a lot easier than we could a proper ranking event.

The PTCs might not be the greatest thing to watch ever, but they still would serve some purposes. Mainly, and most importantly at the moment, it gives players playing opportunities when there isn't any other tournaments going on. Even amateur players.

And as minor as they are, they'd be a damn site more interesting than the Championshit League. Which is just awful.

You'd only need to find a venue that would host it for a few days at a time, rather than a full week. Leicester seems to have hosted a lot of qualifiers recently. Milton Keynes always seems up for it. I am sure they could find somewhere willing to host extra snooker for a few days at a time.

It's not ideal, but it'd give us something in what's been a pretty barren start to the season.

I read on Twitter that Dave Hendon had suggested on his podcast that WST should be exploring this option regards holding PTC style events to keep the players going. I guess it would come down to the economic costs of running such an event whilst using 3 or 4 tables at the venue, which I assume is one of the reasons why qualifying was brought into several events. That said though I can understand why the players feel that there should have been more of a contingency in place, even if you couldn't directly schedule replacements for planned events in a usual calendar.

As others have said, the irony isn't lost on the fact that the players spent time pre-pandemic speaking about how the tour had too much snooker and yet now even with 15 ranking events on the tour they don't feel there is enough snooker on the calendar.

In essence it's been a no-win situation for WST. - I can remember one interview a player gave last year (not Mark Allen) lamenting how there wasn't enough events and then the same player promptly didn't enter some events that were put on.

PLtheRef wrote:

SnookerFan wrote:I don't understand why they don't set up some temporary PTC events.

If and when China comes back and we're allowed to have tournaments there again, we can then get shot of the PTCs a lot easier than we could a proper ranking event.

The PTCs might not be the greatest thing to watch ever, but they still would serve some purposes. Mainly, and most importantly at the moment, it gives players playing opportunities when there isn't any other tournaments going on. Even amateur players.

And as minor as they are, they'd be a damn site more interesting than the Championshit League. Which is just awful.

You'd only need to find a venue that would host it for a few days at a time, rather than a full week. Leicester seems to have hosted a lot of qualifiers recently. Milton Keynes always seems up for it. I am sure they could find somewhere willing to host extra snooker for a few days at a time.

It's not ideal, but it'd give us something in what's been a pretty barren start to the season.

I read on Twitter that Dave Hendon had suggested on his podcast that WST should be exploring this option regards holding PTC style events to keep the players going. I guess it would come down to the economic costs of running such an event whilst using 3 or 4 tables at the venue, which I assume is one of the reasons why qualifying was brought into several events. That said though I can understand why the players feel that there should have been more of a contingency in place, even if you couldn't directly schedule replacements for planned events in a usual calendar.

As others have said, the irony isn't lost on the fact that the players spent time pre-pandemic speaking about how the tour had too much snooker and yet now even with 15 ranking events on the tour they don't feel there is enough snooker on the calendar.

In essence it's been a no-win situation for WST. - I can remember one interview a player gave last year (not Mark Allen) lamenting how there wasn't enough events and then the same player promptly didn't enter some events that were put on.

In one respect, just because you don't think there's enough tournaments, doesn't mean you have to enter everything if there's a tournament practically every week. But yeah, slightly damned if they do and damned if they don't with that one. At least if there's tournaments every week they have the opportunities to play, even if they don't necessarily need to play every week, the opportunities are there.

What I will say is that in some ways WST has always been quite good at papering over the cracks with some things. Yes, of course the tour is better post-Hearn than it was directly pre-Hearn, but that doesn't mean everything is rosey all of the time. Like how Hearn was constantly bragging about how much sponsorship that he's brought in, but all the sponsorship was gambling companies. It was a long time before he extended it to companies outside the gambling world, and even when the WST did do that they rely on Cazoo for everything. Obviously, it's an improvement on what it used to be sponsorship-wise, but bragging how well they're doing with it seems to ignore the problems they still have. A bit smoke and mirrors. Definitely resting on their laurels somewhat.

The reason I use that as an example is that it can be the same here. There seems to have been a bit over-reliant on China. Yes, there's more tournaments in Continental Europe than there used to be, but China because of the popularity was willing to put in a lot of money, even if they weren't getting any crowds in. When China isn't there, they don't seem to know what to do in the first few months of the season. We get a shitty Championship League, the European Masters and then weeks of nothing happening.

I understand that you can't just pull new tournaments out of your bottom. But it's not liked Covid, or the absence of the Chinese tournaments, just happened this season. Some kind of short-term way of filling a few gaps in the season must have been possible by now. Even if it's just a few weekends of PTCS.

SnookerEd25 wrote:“Can we just have more Championship Leagues?”

Said nobody, ever.

BAMO

Slightly getting off the point, one thing I've noticed since Hearn left is I can never remember who the chairman of the WST is.

Hearn, though his personality was about as likeable as a terminal illness, at least was ever present. You couldn't call him anonymous. I've googled the new guy's name several times, and I can still never remember it.

That's got nothing to do with anything, except it does make you wonder how good he is at business deals if he lacks so much charisma and presence that it's hard to remember who he is.

Oh, it's Steve Dawson by the way.

Many players hated half fussed Last minute PTC events in a academy in Sheffield and let's be honest fans complained about too much snooker too.

SnookerEd25 wrote:

SnookerFan wrote:Oh, it's Steve Dawson by the way.

Great. But will we remember that next week?

Maybe when I start attending events more. He'll probably feature in the programme.

SnookerEd25 wrote:

SnookerFan wrote:Oh, it's Steve Dawson by the way.

Great. But will we remember that next week?

Yea he has been in charge over a year now and we have actually seen more of Barry Hearn in that time

There's always Saudi Arabia to come. That bemuses me. Given the middle east haven't got the travel restrictions and it was a big prize pot you'd think that would have been a no brainer to put in this year.

Given when asked, Ferguson still says its in the pipeline, it leads me to think maybe the Saudi's have got cold feet.

I know its not everyones cup of tea due to sportswashing but still.

SteveJJ wrote:There's always Saudi Arabia to come. That bemuses me. Given the middle east haven't got the travel restrictions and it was a big prize pot you'd think that would have been a no brainer to put in this year.

Given when asked, Ferguson still says its in the pipeline, it leads me to think maybe the Saudi's have got cold feet.

I know its not everyones cup of tea due to sportswashing but still.

I thought they'd canned that.