It was Mike Ganley’s call to bring Ali Carter and Barry Hawkins off at 9-9, causing a two hour wait before the resumption.
Ganley is World Snooker’s tournament director and had to weigh up the various factors governing the decision.
Had they carried on when it went 9-9 at 6.35pm, they would most likely have run into the final session.
The other view is that, as it was a decider, they should have remained out there, not least so that the crowd who had stuck with it could see the end.
In Ganley’s job, you are never going to please all of the people all of the time. Certainly, Hawkins wasn’t happy because he had just won three successive frames and the momentum was clearly with him.
However, to read some of the coverage you would think that such a pull-off is unprecedented. It isn’t. It happens every year.
The cut-off point for starting another frame is 40 minutes before the following session.
Therefore, Ganley was right to bring them off.
He could have used his discretion but may then have got it in the neck from those waiting to play the evening session.
5 comments:
We all hate a WSA official to "get it in the neck" for actually using a bit of common sense and their initiative.
They mind set is like a traffic warden - "thems the rules"
thank goodness wsa weren't cavemen, we'd all still be sitting around waiting for "someone else" to invent the wheel
I remember years ago the cut off point was 30 minutes. I have been in the arena in the last few years when a number or deciders have been started with only 25 minutes left. With only a decider left to play I have always applauded this decision as best for the audience and the players- and also those millions watching live on television. In other tournaments where they have played the roll-on-roll off system players have been kept waiting- as those pulled off were here. There seems a difference to me between a player having to wait at the start of a match for no more than an hour and them haveing to wait for a decider for a totally unspecified amount of time between 1 hour and 5. I have never heard audience members complaining about starting a few minutes late for a session due to a decider in the previous session(the fans understand!) but i have heard many grumbles at starting 10/15 minutes later than the advertised time to accomodate television. With a possible 10 frames to play in a session in the first round it would be simple to start evening sessions at 7.30 during the first 5 days of the championship. This would help minimise the mumber of times this would happen and might provide some live snooker still for the very late bbc highlights programme for those not having a red button to press or access to eurosport or the internet!
John H
It is ludicrous that you remove players from the table with only one frame left to play.
There was a chance there would have been no delay to the evening session,and even if there was it would only have been a small one.
As for deciding frames I have never seen anyone play one as badly as Cope did yesterday.It looked like he gave up!Unless Cope learns the finer arts of matchplay he will never seriously contend at The Crucible.
Des
I just don't see the issue here. If the match runs into the that time frame, then they have to come off, end of story. It was clear that this would happen before the match so it shouldn't have come as any great surprise to Hawkins.
It's been happening for years at the Crucible, players should know the rules, ask referees, get the rules clear in their head before they start the match. That way there are no surprises that can affect their concentration throughout the match.
Andy
Obviously the players knew the rules.
However I am sure that neither player can foresee the future so to say the outcome was clear is as ludicrous as not delaying the evening session for a possible few minutes.
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