A thank you to Snooker Island

Yeah I've been saying it for years and it's why I was totally behind John Higgins and Pat Mooney with the World Series because they were out there showing the completely and utterly blind World Snooker administration that it was THE market to tap into because Eurosport had been showing so much snooker. Those two don't get the credit they deserve. A hypothetical discussion about how easy it is to throw a frame ended all that of course, but a hypothetical discussion about throwing a frame in an exhibition event where you'd have to have a slate loose if you were going to bet at all what with the players having to play to the tv schedules and everything.

Anyway, alls well that ends well. The World Series wasn't a proper snooker event in the same way the Shootout isn't and now real snooker is constantly on Eurosport as well as real tournaments being played out there like PTCs and the German Masters and who knows what else in the years to come.

Snooker Overdrive wrote:

Sonny wrote:Great to see people here who got into snooker through Eurosport. And yes Overdrive, when Ronnie beat Ding in the Masters final he was unplayable.

Without Eurosport I wouldn't be a snooker fan now. But it's not only me without their extensive coverage snooker wouldn't have grown on mainland Europe. Eurosport's part in the sports recent recovery is massive.

yeah

we brits dont know were born with TV Snooker coverage and yet eurosport getting stick from some because they cut to the tennis etc.

TV Snooker today is 10 times better in the UK than it was in the 80s even with 8 terestrial tournaments back then but live coverage was Thin on the ground..

highlights at 11pm my snooker coverage on school days consisted of Tetetext.

Most Ronnie O'Sullivan fans will tell you that most forums are anti-Ronnie and pro-Higgins.

Most who dislike Ronnie O'Sullivan will tell you that most forums are strongly pro-Ronnie and anti-Higgins.

You see what you want to see

Tubberlad wrote:Most Ronnie O'Sullivan fans will tell you that most forums are anti-Ronnie and pro-Higgins.

Most who dislike Ronnie O'Sullivan will tell you that most forums are strongly pro-Ronnie and anti-Higgins.

You see what you want to see

spot on

the admin on this forum is pro selby i know of some of you that would have been banned in another forum for some of the selby hating

Hi

Long time reaader, 1st time poster.

I first fell in love with snooker when I saw Jimmy White play Darren Morgan (I think) in the semi of the '94 WC on telly. I don't think the match was anything special, but I do remember Jimmy playing 4-5 really good exhibition shots at the end of the last frame and being gobsmacked by that. Hooked ever since. Then obviously I watched the final (some of it on Ceefax!) and got used to the disappointment of my new hero losing nice and early.

I have no idea how this topic got a duplicate auto update on the SI twitter by the way

https://twitter.com/#!/snookerisland

Dougal wrote:Hi

Long time reaader, 1st time poster.

I first fell in love with snooker when I saw Jimmy White play Darren Morgan (I think) in the semi of the '94 WC on telly. I don't think the match was anything special, but I do remember Jimmy playing 4-5 really good exhibition shots at the end of the last frame and being gobsmacked by that. Hooked ever since. Then obviously I watched the final (some of it on Ceefax!) and got used to the disappointment of my new hero losing nice and early.

ceefax haha i remember the days

would constantly keep checking and also on oracle on itv cos sometimes one of them would update and another wouldnt for ages. always exciting when a score update happened.

hell, when i was in P2 and P3 at school i remember id jotters full of frame scores from all the games which id copied off teletext, stuff like Terry Griffiths 5-3 David Taylor 61-11, 35-72, 44-56, 80-3, 66-55, 59-50, 0-79, 75-29 haha an early addiction to stats

would that be Ceefax page 387? Daily checks from a very early age

I would also like to say that Snookerisland is easily the best discussion board around these days. I know that you, Sonny want it to be player friendly but I don't see that happening any time soon. A pity. Other than that it's a great place to come and have a discussion.
End of ramble.

ah yeh page 380 was the snooker index wasnt it, or was that just during the worlds, the rest of the time it was stuck in the general or other sports section.

snooky147 wrote:I would also like to say that Snookerisland is easily the best discussion board around these days. I know that you, Sonny want it to be player friendly but I don't see that happening any time soon. A pity. Other than that it's a great place to come and have a discussion.
End of ramble.

2b honest with Twitter theres no real need for players to want to frequent places like this id have to say

It will be more player friendly over time, that's the plan.

By that I don't mean get professional players to join although I'm sure we can bag one or two over the next few years, especially the younger ones, but people who play the game.

Because at the end of the day, everyone who plays the game loves talking about it.

Speaking of which, I'm off for some Monday night practice down the club.

Witz78 wrote:ah yeh page 380 was the snooker index wasnt it, or was that just during the worlds, the rest of the time it was stuck in the general or other sports section.

When the worlds or possibly the UK as well were on, they got the page 390 as an index and had up to 398 or 399. The last page was a rolling stats of that event, previous winners starting off with Spencer and Reardon usually. What I remember about Ceefax, is having like a 10 page document which would scroll and hang on each page for about a minute before turning over to the next one, and sometimes you'd read something in the last sentence and the page would flip and then you'd have to wait for the full cycle to read it again. You could hold a page and that shitty graphic came up in the top left of the screen, but then when you unheld it would be about 2 pages further on so you'd have to wait again for it scroll round.

Thinking about it, the number of hours and days I must have wasted just waiting for the bloody Ceefax page to scroll round doesn't bear thinking about.

Sonny wrote:It will be more player friendly over time, that's the plan.

By that I don't mean get professional players to join although I'm sure we can bag one or two over the next few years, especially the younger ones, but people who play the game.

you cant really have a pro player friendly forum anyway ..... thats just impossible

players will be tore apart for missing easy pots.... players wont be liked its life as a sportsman people will love and hate them in equal meassures.

Sonny wrote:

Witz78 wrote:ah yeh page 380 was the snooker index wasnt it, or was that just during the worlds, the rest of the time it was stuck in the general or other sports section.

When the worlds or possibly the UK as well were on, they got the page 390 as an index and had up to 398 or 399. The last page was a rolling stats of that event, previous winners starting off with Spencer and Reardon usually. What I remember about Ceefax, is having like a 10 page document which would scroll and hang on each page for about a minute before turning over to the next one, and sometimes you'd read something in the last sentence and the page would flip and then you'd have to wait for the full cycle to read it again. You could hold a page and that shitty graphic came up in the top left of the screen, but then when you unheld it would be about 2 pages further on so you'd have to wait again for it scroll round.

Thinking about it, the number of hours and days I must have wasted just waiting for the bloody Ceefax page to scroll round doesn't bear thinking about.

ah yeh i remember the page with previous winners well

think thats how i learned the previous winners so well from reading that every year and i used to always get mates to name a year and i could instantly shout out the winner and opponent and score which amazed them

yeh was well annoying holding pages and taking too long to read them. not as annoying as oracle on itv which had bleeding adverts half the pages you had to sit through.

Sonny wrote:

Witz78 wrote:ah yeh page 380 was the snooker index wasnt it, or was that just during the worlds, the rest of the time it was stuck in the general or other sports section.

When the worlds or possibly the UK as well were on, they got the page 390 as an index and had up to 398 or 399. The last page was a rolling stats of that event, previous winners starting off with Spencer and Reardon usually. What I remember about Ceefax, is having like a 10 page document which would scroll and hang on each page for about a minute before turning over to the next one, and sometimes you'd read something in the last sentence and the page would flip and then you'd have to wait for the full cycle to read it again. You could hold a page and that shitty graphic came up in the top left of the screen, but then when you unheld it would be about 2 pages further on so you'd have to wait again for it scroll round.

Thinking about it, the number of hours and days I must have wasted just waiting for the bloody Ceefax page to scroll round doesn't bear thinking about.

bad monkey :REDNECK:

Same for me really, I'm a member of several other forums but SI is probably the one that is the best, easy to access and a regular set of posters keeps the debate going

PLtheRef wrote:and a regular set of posters keeps the debate going

just name names Me,Witz and monique

Sonny, rather than getting players to join, have you thought about opening up guest spots for a couple of hours here and there say, for us lot to fire questions at them. After all you've met a fair few during your ptc travels. Personally I'm not sure it's their place to be permanent members but oters may disagree.

But back on main topic, I've said for a long while, personally to Sonny too, that this forum is genius and as far as I'm concerned, part of the snooker revolution. That might seem strange and exagerrated to some, but I always swore that SKy and particularly, the disgraced one, Andy Gray, were instrumental in dragging English football back on its feet, because of the sheer enthusiasm shown and determination to bring it back. Sonny and founders of other forums/sites have played their part with sheer enthusiasm.
BH wasn't around when Sonny started the Island, and the SI wasn't launched to coincide with the 'revolution', but surely the Island has played its own part in upping interest in our beautiful game.

gallantrabbit wrote:But back on main topic, I've said for a long while, personally to Sonny too, that this forum is genius and as far as I'm concerned, part of the snooker revolution. That might seem strange and exagerrated to some, but I always swore that SKy and particularly, the disgraced one, Andy Gray, were instrumental in dragging English football back on its feet, because of the sheer enthusiasm shown and determination to bring it back. Sonny and founders of other forums/sites have played their part with sheer enthusiasm.
BH wasn't around when Sonny started the Island, and the SI wasn't launched to coincide with the 'revolution', but surely the Island has played its own part in upping interest in our beautiful game.

jesus christ his head is big enough as it is

Yes the thought had crossed my mind gallant. But as I said the idea is to attract the people who play the game as well as those armchair critics who don't. I mean does anyone think Bourne has had a 147?

When the Shotmaker diagrams are all over the place it will draw people in who play the game. I'm not talking about professionals.

Sonny wrote:Yeah I've been saying it for years and it's why I was totally behind John Higgins and Pat Mooney with the World Series because they were out there showing the completely and utterly blind World Snooker administration that it was THE market to tap into because Eurosport had been showing so much snooker. Those two don't get the credit they deserve. A hypothetical discussion about how easy it is to throw a frame ended all that of course, but a hypothetical discussion about throwing a frame in an exhibition event where you'd have to have a slate loose if you were going to bet at all what with the players having to play to the tv schedules and everything.

Anyway, alls well that ends well. The World Series wasn't a proper snooker event in the same way the Shootout isn't and now real snooker is constantly on Eurosport as well as real tournaments being played out there like PTCs and the German Masters and who knows what else in the years to come.

Despite that huge incident that led John higgins to be banned for six months without playing any competitive snooker and Pat Mooney being out of the World Snooker board, those two did very much to promote snooker around areas in Europe where, before that, you wouln´t think that snooker could have a potencial in those places.

The World series of Snooker Grand Final was played in Portugal, and I´m from there, and was played near my home in the Algarve, so I went to see all the matches, got the chance to take some nice photos with the players, the table and the arena too, had a chat with them, some autographs them also, and it was just great to be there with them, with all that incredible atmosphere,

Snooker in Portugal has grown ever since, and although the crowd didn´t quite attend the event as much as it was expected, because the promotion of the event was awful to be honest (in the first couple of days, hardly 10 or 20 people were in the arena watching the matches), in the final day it had more spectators the arena was almost full, and the players liked it, also because here we have beautifful beaches and some nice golf courses, which the players love.

As I said before, snooker here has grown steadly ever since, and now we have some tables around all the country, soem national competitions too,whereas before there was about 3 or 4 tables in the whole country..!! we love snooker around here, and if wasn´t for europsort too, we certainly wouldn´t get half the coverage of snooker we get now..

Great times for snooker and its fans also

absalutly

the promoting game in europe is well and trully showing the worth of thoes little events and eurosport brilliant coverage thats why i was 100% behind the Brazilian Masters from the Off and we need to get these types of events far and wide all over the World and see what it Brings in 4 or 5 years Time.

Wild wrote:absalutly

the promoting game in europe is well and trully showing the worth of thoes little events and eurosport brilliant coverage thats why i was 100% behind the Brazilian Masters from the Off and we need to get these types of events far and wide all over the World and see what it Brings in 4 or 5 years Time.

absalutly....


the geezer's on a wind up surely