I'm currently watching pool on the telly. Sad I know. But there's no footy and it's an opportunity to avoid any further crass, post-match analysis of yesterday's wedding. So why is pool such a poor imitation of snooker? Not remotely in the same league. Same with baseball v cricket and American football v rugby. The balance of evidence might seem to suggest that it's because all the new plastic games were invented by the Yanks because they have a desparate need to be different and then completely f.ck it up. Plastic. Like most things there.
Pool is just a very bad sport for TV. Its painful to watch. Don't be so quick to dismiss baseball. If you have the time then watch a full game, its very enjoyable. American football is also pretty good but adverts completely wreck it. When the BBC did the Superbowl this year without ads and with decent pundits it was 100 times better.
The hell it is. I watched the Yankees play the Baltimore Oriels in New York and my god I'm grateful I didn't have kids then. I would have missed them growing up. Never has anything so boring dragged on for so long as that wretched night.
So, watching American football, and for it to be enjoyable, you have to watch it remotely and not in real time? Says it all really. And why do they persist with 'football' for a game that is primarily played with the hands? Admittedly, rugby does that too. No way are either 'football'. There's only one football. And we don't have to call it soccer to keep anybody else happy.
There was a discussion on Talk***** the other day about how snooker could get back to the heights of it's popularity, as if it's possible to make a dreary sport played in silence by boring farts remotely popular now. It worked in the 70s when there were limited TV channels and the options were snooker, news, a soap opera, or a rerun of the Good Life. Even then personally I found a grubby Felicity Kendal infinitely more interesting.
Snooker may not be the best TV sport. But at least there's a whole lot of skill in making a big break.
I have to support Diamond on baseball. It’s a surprisingly subtle one for an American sport, but it’s true you do have to invest quite a lot of time in learning about it to appreciate it. Just like Test cricket. If you grow up with either of them they come more naturally. Baseball is a slow burner of a sport where an intense duel takes place between pitcher and batter but eventually (only in some games, like our own beloved football) there can be a fast-moving spectacular conclusion.
For the first couple of years a handful of Indian women were cheerleaders but now one of the main reasons why they're white is down to not wanting to bring the wrath of conservative religious groups onto the game by having young Indian women being sexually suggestive in both clothing and movements. It is deemed acceptable to have young white women do the same though. There are a fair number of articles online about this subject from as far back as 2008 when the IPL started. Here's a quote from 2015 by South African cheerleader Gabriella Pasqualotto. Many asked why the cheerleaders are all white, and the cheerleader picked this as one of the things she didn't like about her job. "I hate the racism. Why do Indians feel it's ok to dress white girls up in skimpy outfits but they won't let their fellow Indian women do it? It's messed up." And there was a little more truth: "Sadly, there's nothing I can do about that. If I refuse I'd be breaking my contract and they'd replace me with another white girl anyway... I went into this contract as a dancer, [but I'm] finding that I'm treated more as a sex object...I enjoy what I do regardless. But I wouldn't renew this contract for another year unless things changed."
Did Felicity ever play snooker? The thought of her straddling the table to tackle a tricky pink, the taut denim of her dungerees accentuating her perky physique, would have given pause for thought to my younger self.
Being in my late twenties, I was incredibly shocked to hear recently that snooker was once popular. I wondered why the BBC had it on so much. The players are skillful, but what an incredibly boring sport to watch. Baseball is the same. Like watching paint dry. I'd even rather watch a game of bowls than snooker, pool or baseball. The only American sport worth watching is basketball. Even that is miles behind football and rugby. I do Sky+ the superbowl and fast forward between plays. Whilst interesting tactically, it's still 2x too long, even with the ffw.
While snooker isn't a fast paced sport, not all sports can be, the skill of not just potting but controlling the cue ball is mesmerising. I've been lucky enough to have been to the Crucible last year and the year before, and the atmosphere whilst quiet is tense and enjoyable. At least with iPlayer you can get to choose which table to watch during the two-table format before the semi final.
Like most <cough> over 40s today, I too was a bit wrapped up with snooker in the mid 80s. Mostly cos my kid brother played to a high standard and because there were a few characters in the game then. Many people played it too, my brother, dad and I were members of a Farnham snooker club. Pool I could play wearing boxing gloves, it's not really a patch on snooker for skill. The balls and pockets are bigger and the table is a quarter the size. Still, without wanting to step into Mollyboo territory both have their place. I enjoy the fun of pool as well as the seriousness of snooker. I played billiards too...that has elements of both.
I would also add that American sports suck donkey dīck. All, and by that I mean ALL, are just adultish variations on what English school girls and boys have played for ever. Baseball is our rounders; Basketball is our netball; Ice hockey is our grass hockey; Grid iron (their so called football) is our rugby; Ten pin bowling is our skittles America has given the world zero sports whereas England, in addition to all the above has given the world's favourite sport, plus of course tennis, skiing, cricket, badminton, golf, darts, table tennis, lawn bowls, squash, curling and most others.
I refer you to my earlier post on baseball. It seems we are diametrically opposite on US sports because the one I have never been able to ‘get’ is basketball. I’m prepared to be educated but to me it has a ludicrously high scoring rate, so much so that a team HAS to score every time they have possession of the ball. This means a game is soon over if one team gets well ahead, or the decisive moments only happen in the last seconds. On top of that, only freakishly tall players can take part.
I used to play pool in the pub and got reasonably good at it. It's a good pub game largely because of the turnover of frames giving plenty of chances for everyone to have a go. Snooker is on an entirely different plane skillwise. I never got any good at it at all.
If you can play it in a pub, it’s not a sport in my eyes. That being said, if Barry Hearn would do exactly what he’s done with darts and applied it to Snooker, it might be more appealing to the masses. The matches are too long, the frames are too long, the silence from the crowd is ridiculous and the players have no personality save for one or two. The dullest of the dull. I don’t like most American sport - I do like NFL, I will admit. But comparing to two is like chalk and cheese. Snooker is dull. It takes lots of skill. But so does portrait painting or chess and I have no desire to watch either of those because they are dull to witness.
But it was Barry Hearn who popularised snooker in the 80s. Over 18m watched the 85 world final. On the more Essexish portions of the M25 in the following years, I often saw a Jag with the plate THE147S.
That was 32 years ago. And snooker is exactly the same now as it was then. If anything it’s more boring as players play more cautiously and it’s full of ‘safety’ play. It hasn’t modernised itself whatsoever.
It is much less of a draw. Pre Sky, the amount of live football was minimal, as was the volume of live sport from abroad, aside from the Olympics & major tournaments. Also, the technical standard & consistency of the top 20-30 snooker players is far higher. The money makes it a serious profession & they don’t drink alcohol while playing. I recall the times when politely sipping a lager was the only manly alternative to the shot of vodka a frame regime of Alex Higgins & many others. Similar to that rushed Woodbine after the half time orange.
I remember Higgins taking a slash in one of the pockets at the Crucible. It was never televised but it genuinely happened.