Re: Betway United Kingdon Championship Last 128 !!!!!
snucar wrote: Do you really think Eurosport is really doing a much better job just because it has Ronnie in the studio? I love him as a player but as a commentator he's as boring as Ken Doherty if you ask me. Full of cliches and brings nothing new. I won't even start about Jimmy White or Murray and Foulds. Only ITV is doing a slightly better job both on commentating and production values but the general picture and patterns is still the very same as the BBC (I repeat) defined long time a go.
So, I firmly believe those 3 tournaments deserve to be there on top of others because this is where most of snooker's history has been made and that's something all the Opens, IC, CoC etc can't buy.
I agree with you on everybody except Neil Foulds. He is an excellent pundit and commentator. Ronnie and Jimmy aren't great, but Neil is their unsung hero, so to speak. I will agree with you about Colin Murray who is one of the most irritating people on TV, nothing but rubbish jokes, smug grins and shameless pandering.
But the BBC commentators/pundits, with the exception and Davis and Hendry (and even he is starting to slip, despite being good on ITV) have an absolutely lamentable knowledge of current snooker. With any player who's outside the top 16 and under 35 you'll hear them say "I don't know anything about this player/ he's surprising everyone here/ he's showing us he can play." Guys, some of these players are semi-regularly reaching quarter finals of tournaments! Pull your golf clubs out of your baboons shiny behinds and actually watch some of the sport you claim to love and you would know that. Hell, you might even be able to educate the audience on players who didn't retire in 1994.
In regard to history, honestly I think it's overrated by some. That's not to say it isn't important but that shouldn't give a tournament a divine right to be considered a major. History takes time to achieve after all. Look at the Australian Open in tennis. 30 years ago a lot of the top players didn't even bother playing there, but over time its pedigree grew as more players started to take it seriously and treat it as a true grand slam.
Look at football teams like Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Leeds, Wolves. All have had great periods of success in their past but you couldn't call them Big Clubs now (and I say that as a Villa fan,) not truly.
The UK is ahead of most tournaments but not head and shoulders in my opinion. As I've said before, give it another 10 years of them being held and something like the CoC or the International Championship could easily match or supercede it. At the end of the day, whether a tournament is a major depends ENTIRELY on how it is viewed by the players, and if the governing body continues to rest on its laurels and treat it as a normal tournament the players will follow suit, and history can only do so much to withstand that.
Look at the Welsh Open. As of this season's iteration it has TWENTY FIVE years of history, it's basically as old as I am, but it will (rightly) never be considered a major because its format, prize money and perception don't warrant it.
For what it's worth, for me The Masters is comfortably above the UK in the number two slot.
Apologies for typos, I'm using my phone and this post is too long to go back and check through.
Tl;dr: Apologise to Neil Foulds Goddammit!
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Iranu - Posts: 41481
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