SnookerEd25 wrote:SnookerFan wrote:
I actually like watching Murphy play. He has an attacking style. Don't mind seeing him live.
He's just a bit of a bell sometimes.
Totally agree, when he's on his A game - absolutely beautiful to watch, glides round the table like a Rolls Royce but, as you say, bit of a bell-end when not on the table. Very similar to Stephen Lee in fact, on both fronts.
I think the reason that I can look past Murphy's annoying habits when I'm watching him play, is because I don't believe there's any real malice there most of the time.
Aside from the odd occasion, like the incident with Mag's chalk, I don't believe he's doing it to be a cockerel. He legitimately thinks he's helping the game. It doesn't occur to him, for example, that nobody is interested in his boring-arse kick related analysis. He's a snooker player, he believes he's helping the game in trying to find a conclusion. It doesn't occur to him that most people aren't interested in what he has to say. (Unless he has a definitive way of eradicating kicks completely, there's not a lot of point him turning up on the BBC to keep on about it.) Also, a lot of his suggestions just come across as silly. Like his insistence that snooker should have shot clocks in ranking events. (They shouldn't.) Or his bootlicking that year they stopped Front Row Bryan from wearing football tops, and saying that fans should look smart because they're in a theatre, or whatever stupid reason it was. I don't think it occurs to him he's making suggestions that are either trivial and unnecessary, or just plain bad. In his mind he's helping the game he loves by making these suggestions. Or by commentating when he should be preparing for a match.
Murphy is the epitome of somebody who is annoying but not deliberately malicious. He's not doing it to upset people. Even if he can be a bit of a busy-body.
If you compare him to somebody like Mark Allen, who accuses Chinese players of being cheats because he lost to one, or has unprovoked rants against Mark Joyce and his mother etc. (Or to a lesser extent with Bingham and his perceived lack of bottle.) It just comes across as being unkind, no reason or provocation.
Murphy's more of a minor annoyance. Nice to watch play, but you wouldn't want to listen to his opinion on anything.