Post a reply

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby SnookerFan

Iranu wrote:
SnookerFan wrote:https://twitter.com/BarryHearn/status/1619653974000553986

Well, this reassures me.

Half truth, half bull


Less bull than he normally talks then.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby SnookerFan

KrazeeEyezKilla wrote:The "win more matches" stuff is silly. If they did win more matches then somebody else would be losing more.


Hot take.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby HappyCamper

if they had more matches in total, then more people could win more matches, then everybody is happy.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby SnookerEd25

Hearn’s response mirrors the Tory MP who said “people unhappy with their wage should go and get a better-paid job” <doh>

Some people just have no idea of real life, I’m afraid :hmmm:

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby LDS

The current rankings and nationalities of all tour snooker players aged 25 and under:

China's Zhou Yuelong (25) - 26
China's Fan Zhengyi (22) - 37
China's Lyu Haotian (25) - 39
China's Pang Junxu (22) - 56
China's Yuan Sijun (22) - 57
Wales' Jackson Page (21) - 65
China's Wu Yize (19) - 66
China's Xu Si (25) - 72
China's Lei Peifan (19) - 75
England's Louis Heathcote (25) - 84
Belgium's Julien Leclercq (19) - 85
China's Si Jaihui (20) - 89
Wales' Dylan Emery (21) - 90
Scotland's Dean Young (21) - 99
Ireland's Aaron Hill (20) - 101
Belgium's Ben Mertens (18) - 111
Thailand's Mink Nutcharut (23) - 119
China's Yisong Peng (21) - 120
England's Jenson Kendrick (21) - 123
Ukraine's Anton Kazakov (18) - 130

While the sport doesn't need youth to function, it's been quite a few years since 'a new talent' emerged. Sports do need new emerging talents in order to generate a sense of excitement into events and inspire young people to think 'hey, I could try that'.

Having someone 'new' but older win their first ranker is always exciting and interesting and snooker has a long heritage of this, but such cases don't normally herald a sense of a new era. In that they don't inspire new young players to think 'I could do that right now'.

Alex Higgins was 22 when he burst onto the scene in 1972 as an instant winner.
Willie Thorne was 20 when he arrived as an exciting new talent in 1974.
Steve Davis was 21 when he started strutting in 1979.
Kirk Stevens was 21 when he set the world alight in 1980.
Jimmy White was 19 when he blasted the gates open in 1981.
John Parrott was 19 when he immediately became a contender in 1984.
Stephen Hendry was just 17 when he started butchering experienced players on a regular basis in 1986.
And then there was the whole era of youth for 20 years from 1990-2010.
The 2010s were quite slow in this regard, but young people still emerged:
Kyren Wilson won his first event at 24.
Anthony McGill won his at 25.
Luca Brecel made his first final at 20.
Michael White winning events at 23.
No striking dominators, but still lots of young talent with great tournament presence.

Yes, you could argue people like Yan and Xintong were the ones from the current era, but we'll never know if Xintong was just a flash in the pan like an awful lot of Chinese players and Yan still wasn't either dominating or a crowd puller and generally struggled to stay in the top 16 even when having a good season.

And the banning of these two has really laid bare the dearth of youth talent generally. It only takes one or two young players to come forth every other year, they don't even need to be dominators or exciting players, they just need to make a name for themselves, and there are, pretty much, zero young players making a name for themselves at the moment, and haven't been for a long enough time to make a serious note of it.

It's quite an unprecedented era in this regard.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Iranu

LDS wrote:Alex Higgins was 22 when he burst onto the scene in 1972 as an instant winner.
Willie Thorne was 20 when he arrived as an exciting new talent in 1974.
Steve Davis was 21 when he started strutting in 1979.
Kirk Stevens was 21 when he set the world alight in 1980.
Jimmy White was 19 when he blasted the gates open in 1981.
John Parrott was 19 when he immediately became a contender in 1984.
Stephen Hendry was just 17 when he started butchering experienced players on a regular basis in 1986.
And then there was the whole era of youth for 20 years from 1990-2010.

To be honest, aside from the 90s-00s, that’s really not very many.

Which suggests that those 20-odd years are the anomaly, not the present day.

The main difference being that many of the names mentioned above had accomplished more by comparable ages. And despite their current suspension we had Yan Bingtao winning the Masters at 21 or whatever it was which is certainly more notable than Willie Thorne and Kirk Stevens, and Zhao only a couple of years older at the UK last year.

Edit: I responded to your list without reading the rest but I’ll leave the above anyway

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby KrazeeEyezKilla

There's been plenty of young players achieving success but very few of them have been able to follow it up. Yan Bngtao hadn't won anything since the lockdown Masters win. Zhao Xintong won the German Masters after his UK triumph but then faded. Luca Brecel has had a very stop start career too. That's just the three most obvious examples.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby chengdufan

The game is in safe hands. Jordan Brown, Chris Wakelin <thinks> Michael Georgiou...
Plenty of young talent winning stuff these days.
Michael White's back on the way up...

Nothing to worry about

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Iranu

KrazeeEyezKilla wrote:There's been plenty of young players achieving success but very few of them have been able to follow it up. Yan Bngtao hadn't won anything since the lockdown Masters win. Zhao Xintong won the German Masters after his UK triumph but then faded. Luca Brecel has had a very stop start career too. That's just the three most obvious examples.

It was only like 9 months between Zhao’s German Masters win and him being suspended. And the manner of that suspension may even explain that.

I always felt that his ‘slump’ was overblown by many. Some of the most successful players of all time generally win a tournament or two a season unless they have a fantastic one.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby LDS

Iranu wrote:
KrazeeEyezKilla wrote:There's been plenty of young players achieving success but very few of them have been able to follow it up. Yan Bngtao hadn't won anything since the lockdown Masters win. Zhao Xintong won the German Masters after his UK triumph but then faded. Luca Brecel has had a very stop start career too. That's just the three most obvious examples.

It was only like 9 months between Zhao’s German Masters win and him being suspended. And the manner of that suspension may even explain that.

I always felt that his ‘slump’ was overblown by many. Some of the most successful players of all time generally win a tournament or two a season unless they have a fantastic one.


I'd be hard pressed to find any other player with a scoresheet like this one:

Image

There's nothing there to make any kind of comparison to anyone else at all. Maybe Mark Johnston-Allen?

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby LDS

Iranu wrote:I dunno what you’re trying to convey to be honest, LDS.


Well...

You used the words "his slump", but in order to have a slump you have to have had an up. There's no 'up' on that score sheet, there's just a couple of sudden out the blue wins.

You then compared your reasoning to many great players might win the odd thing occasionally without doing much else, when that's not really how it works, as they'll have a lot more QFs, SFs and Fs littered around in a more consistent manner.

So I'm countering your narrative here by showing there's not really anything in your narrative that matches his record.

What are you trying to convey? That Xintong was without doubt going to be the one to watache from here-on in?

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Iranu

LDS wrote:
Iranu wrote:I dunno what you’re trying to convey to be honest, LDS.


Well...

You used the words "his slump", but in order to have a slump you have to have had an up. There's no 'up' on that score sheet, there's just a couple of sudden out the blue wins.

You then compared your reasoning to many great players might win the odd thing occasionally without doing much else, when that's not really how it works, as they'll have a lot more QFs, SFs and Fs littered around in a more consistent manner.

So I'm countering your narrative here by showing there's not really anything in your narrative that matches his record.

What are you trying to convey? That Xintong was without doubt going to be the one to watache from here-on in?

bucking hell mate.

I was obviously using the word ‘slump’ in relation to Krazee talking about him having ‘faded’. Not only that but I was actively querying whether the period since then even qualified as a slump!

If you don’t think two big tournament wins following his previous record (which you have very kindly screenshotted there) constitutes an ‘up’ that’s your prerogative.

I wasn’t actively comparing him to great players, merely saying that even they would consider 2 titles in a year a decent return.

I didn’t mention anything about Zhao definitely being one to watch.

So what the hell are you talking about?

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby LDS

What I'm talking about is plain and obvious.

Who are the young players currently making a name for themselves as has historically always been the case with snooker.

We could argue that Yan and Zhao were this era's young talent, but even then that's a bit of a stretch in that neither player really exemplified what is meant by a 'new talent' in terms of how it normally works.

You seem to be wanting to make the case that, yes, they were this era's new talent but it's just been removed by the bannings. Which is fine, but you seem to get excited/confused when people reply to your postulations.

I think the replies have been clear enough and that you're just struggling to make a case for the two players being obvious new young talents, which probably frustrates you?

I am right in thinking you're trying to make the argument that "no, our era doesn't lack new talent and this era isn't that different to any other", right?

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Iranu

LDS wrote:What I'm talking about is plain and obvious.

Who are the young players currently making a name for themselves as has historically always been the case with snooker.

We could argue that Yan and Zhao were this era's young talent, but even then that's a bit of a stretch in that neither player really exemplified what is meant by a 'new talent' in terms of how it normally works.

You seem to be wanting to make the case that, yes, they were this era's new talent but it's just been removed by the bannings. Which is fine, but you seem to get excited/confused when people reply to your postulations.

I think the replies have been clear enough and that you're just struggling to make a case for the two players being obvious new young talents, which probably frustrates you?

I am right in thinking you're trying to make the argument that "no, our era doesn't lack new talent and this era isn't that different to any other", right?

What are you talking about?

Krazee said that Zhao had faded. I questioned whether less than a year constituted fading. I have said no more about what he and Yan have actually done so far than you did beyond that it was more than a couple of the names you’r mentioned.

Separately I suggested that you could argue the period from 1990-2010 was anomalous as that was the period that as you rightly said was an ‘era of youth’, compared to around 3-4 in the other eras.

So no, you're not right and that’s not what I was saying. I even said, quite plainly, that there was a difference.

Are you quite certain that I’m the one who’s confused?

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby lhpirnie

The best evidence for the ability of Yan and Zhao is just watching them play. Yan Bingtao outplayed Higgins (in the Masters) and Selby (in the WC) with his safety game. That's mightily impressive. I actually think he won the Masters with his B-game. Too bad his Masters win didn't count in the rankings. But for some reason, he was just a bit too cautious with his attacking game in the big matches. He can certainly score heavily though. But now it's not clear he will ever play again. Zhao Xintong was always going to be hit-and-miss, but still an obviously brilliant talent. His record up until his suspension was not dissimilar to Trump's first few years. But all Chinese players, including Ding, have underachieved, which may be due to being outsiders on a British tour.

We have lost two huge talents, and yes, to an extent the cupboard is bare.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby SnookerFan

Pink Ball wrote:IF we've seen the end of all these players, they'd all be a loss. Zhao would be a very big loss. Losing Yan Bingtao would mean losing someone nailed on to be an all-time great.

In my not so humble opinion.


Definitely one to watch.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby Dan-cat

Pink Ball wrote:IF we've seen the end of all these players, they'd all be a loss. Zhao would be a very big loss. Losing Yan Bingtao would mean losing someone nailed on to be an all-time great.

In my not so humble opinion.


You told us to watch him this season, and you were right.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby KrazeeEyezKilla

KrazeeEyezKilla wrote:There's been plenty of young players achieving success but very few of them have been able to follow it up. Yan Bngtao hadn't won anything since the lockdown Masters win. Zhao Xintong won the German Masters after his UK triumph but then faded. Luca Brecel has had a very stop start career too. That's just the three most obvious examples.


Also the older players can drop down the rankings but they always seem to boomerang back. Ali Carter was out of the Top 16 since 2019 but is back in now. Ryan Day was barely in the top 64 before winning the 2021 Shootout but was 16th last week.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby SnookerFan

Dan-cat wrote:
Pink Ball wrote:IF we've seen the end of all these players, they'd all be a loss. Zhao would be a very big loss. Losing Yan Bingtao would mean losing someone nailed on to be an all-time great.

In my not so humble opinion.


You told us to watch him this season, and you were right.


Pink knew he was up to no good. He's been warning us to keep an eye on him for years.

Re: Maguire: 'Snooker is dying'

Postby BringBackTonyDrago

11 mill prize money a year ? If that is right the average for the 128 players on tour would be around 85k a year. Obviously that won’t be achieved by at least 1/4 or even a 1/3.

I honestly think they need to restructure the calendar make it nice and simple.

The majors still the same with the Worlds, UK and the only invitational masters. Then this is where it gets interesting. I think we keep the shoot out as that is a proper random fun filled crowd entertainer tournament that would be good for moral mid season. Then have the English, Scottish, Welsh, northern & Irish tournament consecutively playing venues at the capitals cities. Then have a tournament in China, Thailand, Germany and another different European country each year and call it the European open/cup then look to go to other continents to promote the sport like Africa and America. Could have a different African country each year hosting and call it the African cup of nations or African Open and the America could host in Vegas and call it the Vegas Classic.I would scrap the champions league that annoys me and the format make me ill. 15 tournaments there. Spread out the prize money better and then top 128 players can make a living. Also I would scrap qualifying and just make each event 7 rounds except for the majors. Even with the African or American idea could have a group stage format and make it interesting. There so many different scenarios anyone can make up to make the tour logistically better and along with more entertaining.