Ronnie79 wrote:The general public dont know who mark williams is are you sure ?. Every man and his dog knows about the 98 Masters final and the black ball finish.
Although I am in my 30s, I only started following snooker fairly recently. I didn't know about Mark Williams and the black ball final until I started reading up on these things years later. However, even as a schoolkid, long before I had any interest whatsoever in snooker, I had heard of Alex Higgins. Of course, much of this was due to Alex's off-the-table antics - the hellraising lifestyle and the run ins with the snooker establishment. Such things are manna from heaven as far as the media is concerned so Alex would make front page headlines. Eventhough I hadn't seen him play, I was aware that he had a reputation for having a flamboyant playing style and even this seemed daring in a sport that I and I believe a lot of other folk had hitherto perceived as a boring old man's game run by a load of squares.
It is no slight on Mark Williams for me to say that I don't regard him as a household name. I'd like to reiterate that I have a very high opinion of Mark as a player but I do not believe he ever captured the public's imagination the way that Alex did.
What I have said is only anecdotal evidence. I don't have statistics that I can use to back up my claim, but I can only say that, based upon my personal experience, I believe if you went round the uk asking people at random if they knew who Alex Higgins was, that most people would know but if you asked if they knew who Mark was most wouldn't.