Perhaps the saddest thing about the match fixing stories swirling around the Maplin UK Championship is that they have overshadowed what has so far been a really excellent tournament.
The last 16 line up is about as good as it gets. 13 members of the elite top 16 made it through. The three non-seeds - Matthew Stevens, Mark Williams and Stephen Lee - were all in the top 16 last season.
Ronnie O'Sullivan was, I thought, superb last night. He made three centuries in claiming a 5-3 lead over Joe Perry.
The first, a 127, was particularly sublime. In fact, it was a beautiful break.
There has been some top quality snooker played so far and it promises to be a vintage week.
This is another reason the investigation into the Maguire v Burnett match needs to be conducted openly and swiftly (the precedent was set in Peter Francisco's case, which was concluded within a month of his match in the 1995 World Championship).
The WPBSA should release a statement - today - to confirm that the match is under investigation. This would reassure everyone that they are taking it seriously. The general statement about betting they issued yesterday did not.
One last thing: a big thanks to globalcuesportscentre for their coverage. Worldsnooker.com does not work while play is on, which is absurd for a governing body's official website.
Were it not for GSC this tournament would be impossible for many people to follow.
10 comments:
Agree about Globalsnookercentre it shouldn't be but is a far better resource for snooker than the World Snooker site and i'm guessing the World Snooker site has had far more money invested in it. The livescoring on the World Snooker site is a bit of a joke, it took me 7 mins to get into it yesterday. Well done Janie.
Hear hear! Janie, do you have a button anywhere on the site for those of us who would like to become patrons? The site is very worthy of support.
Excellent site is globalsnookercentre. keeps us informed of not just the big events but whats going on in the qualifiers. Well done.
Dave I just logged on here purely to express my frustration at the slackness of World Snooker and their website. I'm not surprised to find a recent blog entry referring to this very matter.
What is it with these clowns? Not only have they been a part of cutting back the work of excellent journalists such as yourself and others in the snooker writers association to report the sport to a wider audience through newspapers, but time and again whenever a big tournament such as the UK is happening their website crashes presumably due to traffic.
It wouldn't surprise me if the next thing they try to do is block globalsnookercentre from publishing live scores on the grounds of copyrighting as well as having a hand in trying to remove the legend Clive Everton from the BBC snooker team.
On a sidenote what are your views on copyrighting in terms of the following example:
Mark Selby v Shaun Murphy 2007 world semi-final. A classic encounter and one of the best breaks under pressure from Selby in the deciding frame you are ever likely to see. It used to be on youtube, but recently when I tried to share the experience with fellow snooker fans it had been removed on the grounds of copyright. So in effect this piece of snooker history is destined to be forgotten forever by future generations.
How many more ways can the powers that be think of to strangle the game we all love, to death?
Totally agree with the previous post.
Off topic, (but maybe not):
I used to watch livescores using "Wheels in Motion" website a couple of years ago.
I liked it cause it was precise and accurate, and gave the frame scoreline.
Anybody knows why it has disappeared ?
Thx
The website was run by a pretty dodgy character and he ran out of money
ok. Thank you for your answer Dave.
(and congratulations to Ding for his maximum break)
Well done GSC- can World snooker learn anything from this- perhaps they should pay GSC to provide them with a quality service?
I am very thankful for Global Snooker Centre - especially as we cant even watch 4 half of the last 16 matches on tv- surely this is a backward step- if Carter,Ebdon,Fu or Allen wins the title we will of seen none of their play before the quarterfinals!
The lack of coverage is emphasised further when we do not get to see Dott V Doherty and Steve Davis refers to it (before the start) as the most fascinating tie of the round, and now Hazel is referring to Ebdon/Carter as a great contest!
If the BBC can cover half a dozen tennis courts at Wimbledon surely they can cover 4 snooker tables!
John H
Thank you fans!!!!
I must apologise that even GSC was a bit slow with scores for a while this afternoon.
It seems the gremlins got intot all the internet connections in the building, and short of trotting round Telford with my laptop looking for a BT hotspot, we weren't able to upload for about an hour.
Hopefully all will be well tonight as we head to the conclusion of these first two superb quarter finals.
In answer to one of our generous readers, we don't have a subscription page any longer, but any contribution to Janie's (i need yet another new mouse) fund could be made to pay pal at j.watkins781@btinternet.com
Many thanks - and Dave, don't shout us up too much or the Bristol Jackboot might be slammed down firmly on my head, not for the first time of course!
Post a Comment