Wildey wrote:PLtheRef wrote:Wildey wrote:its up to the individual to play or not but there's no substitute to match practice and there is no excuse to be burnout playing in the World Championship that's just a convenient excuse for being rubbish.
Is that a suggestion that a lot of good players suddenly drop in standard once they reach Sheffield?
I'm like you in being skeptical burnout actually occurs but to claim its just players covering up rubbish displays actually undermines the performances from the players who beat them, many of whom have taken their biggest scalps in the event
they couldn't hack it pure and simple.
sorry if that's not politically correct but there you go.
There was 3 weeks without any snooker before Sheffield last year for the top 16 with John Higgins, Ding Junhui and Judd Trump even more time off having lost in the last 32 in china. so a month to prepare.
lets get real here it was as if they were like rabbits in headlamps having Ronnie back.
I'm fairly sure players can hack it - after all we had four players in the top 16 in the semi-finals of the 2013 World Championships despite claims of the "b" word , and like I said deriding players who did raise the issue as rubbish is diminishing of some players arguably best results, certainly on TV. Its like saying the only reason qualifiers like Davis, White, Poomjaeng and Milkins did well was because the opponent played rubbish.
In fact you've handed the ideal excuse for any of the top 16 who do go out in the first round to take away the due plaudits to their conqueror. "Well I played rubbish so they didn't really need to do much to beat me."
Burnout is not a good excuse, I agree there certainly when you consider that players playing for a week almost solid in the last fortnight have done well in the last two World Championships, but players don't simply play rubbish on the main stage and as GJ said a player who is fresher between one with 1 match all season compared to another with 50 matches played and you're going to say the one who plays 1 match.
Plus playing devils advocate here, Davis played some 14 hours less snooker in the 1983 Championship than Thorburn, and won the final 18-6 was that simply the matter of a World Championship Finalist suddenly playing rubbish?