
You Win Again.
It was time for World Snooker to dish out the awards last night at the swanky Dorchester in London and the players that could be bothered to show up seem to have had a great time, even if they didn’t end up collecting an award.
Ronnie predictably went away with the World Snooker Player of the Year and with the Journalists Player of the Year. This prompted what I thought was a very odd tweet from Ronnie’s manager at Grove Snooker who decided to say ‘Thanks to all journalists. Not bloggers. Ronnie is their player of the year’. This might be lost in translation but I took this as a direct swipe at those of us who devote a great deal of unpaid time to the sport and as a consequence to the players that play it.
UPDATE: It appears it was lost in translation and Grove simply meant that bloggers should also be included so I have removed the previous rant and I apologise to Grove for jumping the gun.
Grove player Judd Trump deservedly scooped the fans player of the year, Luca Brecel’s performance in the World Championship earned him Rookie of the Year, which last year went to Jack Lisowski who seemed to struggle a bit this season, but it’s far too early to call this a ‘curse’.
Stephen Hendry’s maximum in his swansong at the Crucible followed on from Rory McLeod fluking a black to scoop the Magic Moment prize and out and out grafter and thoroughly nice chap Stuart Bingham picked up an award for Performance of the Year for taking his first ranking title in Australia in dramatic fashion, coming back from a seemingly desperate position to pip Mark Williams at the post.
But surely the most bizarre award went to Walter Donaldson, the two times World Champion and prolific ‘currently dead’ tweeter (follow him here) who was inducted into the World Snooker Hall of Fame from the Great Billiard Hall in the Sky, in there Walter can recount tales of the slate driveway he made out of his old snooker table with Ronnie, Mark Williams and John Higgins, the three greats of the post-Hendry era in terms of World Titles.
The awards are listed below, but of course the real ones that matter ‘The Willies’ grabbed the headlines last night with one of the journalists who received an award getting a bit touchy about it. Ooops.
Ronnie O’Sullivan
Journalists (NOT BLOGGERS) Player of the Year
World Snooker Player of the Year
Judd Trump
Fans Player of the Year
Luca Brecel
Rookie of the Year
Stephen Hendry
Magic Moment (for his 147)
Stuart Bingham
Performance of the Year (for winning the Australian Open)
Walter Donaldson (!?!!?), Mark Williams, Ronnie O’Sullivan and John Higgins.
Inducted into the World Snooker Hall of Fame.
(Thanks as ever to Monique Limbos for the main image)