The first ranking event of the season starts in a few hours. The summer hiatus comes to an end and I want to share a few thoughts about some of the things that happened during the “break”.

A lot of exhibitions were organised during the late spring, both in Asia and in mainland Europe. More than I can remember ever before certainly. They were very well attended and some additional dates had to be added for the European “leg” such was the demand. They “sold out” in no time. WST seems to have relaxed the restrictions on those events quite a bit, which is good. . This is probably the result of the renegotiation of the players contract, under pressure of the players representatives. Giving more visibility to those exhibitions has certainly not caused the sport any damage, quite the opposite.

A number of snooker players were/are in China, playing in a Heyball event with a prize money worth over 200000 pounds for the winner. Amongst them, two former World Champions Stuart Bingham and Graeme Dott.

In recent days I have been watching a lot of the 2024 nine ball pool World Championship and I think snooker could learn from them. I did like the setup in Jeddah a lot. I also like the double elimination system, as it gives every player a guaranteed two matches. One of the players who lost his first match, made the most of his second chance and reached the SFs. The field is much younger than in snooker, and much, much more international. Events are organised all around the globe – no UK centrism here – with events coming in Hanoi, the USA and Germany in the summer. I which snooker was much more like that. Of course, pool is easier to learn at a basic level than snooker, the tables are smaller too. It’s cheaper and probably economically more profitable for clubs to invest in pool equipment rather than in snooker equipment. Even so, I think it would be worth to analyse the reasons behind their success … especially are they are not even shown on television, at least not in our part of the world.

Then the was this post on facebook by Tim Dunkley, one of the most respected coaches in the UK:

I WAS reminded this morning of what I said a year ago when eight past or present members of the Saturday morning junior leagues at Chandlers Ford Snooker Club were called up by England for the 2023 Home Internationals.

“We will never be able to repeat this achievement,” I declared.

How wrong can you be. This week eight past or present members of the Saturday morning junior leagues received invites for the 2024 Home Internationals.

All eight started their competitive careers in our Under-13 League. So for those players struggling to make a bridge hand or trying to hit the cue-ball in a straight line or even yet to pick up a cue for the first time, commitment and hard work could lead to you donning a waistcoat with a gold three-lions badge. It happened with these eight.

The Chandlers Ford SC Under-13 League runs from 9-11am every Saturday. The Under-19 League runs from 11am-1pm every Saturday. We also run junior competitions from 11am-3pm on every weekday during every school holiday.

Time now to prove that these eight were once beginners. Pictured are: Asten Sahota, Ellise Scott, Harry Wyatt, Oliver Sykes, O’Shay Scott, Riley Ellis, Ryan Spratt and William Thomson.

First of all, well done to Tim and his team: they do a great job to bring kids of both genders to snooker and have done that for many years. One name in that list caught my attention, I put it in bold. Ellise is a 13 years old girl. I checked the HIBSF site and there doesn’t seem to be a women event on the menu. So I can only suppose that Ellise has been deemed good enough to compete in the open event, on par with the boys belonging to the same age group. And it appears that another young girl will compete for Scotland: Sophie Nix. I’m not sure it’s happened before and it shows that, although there is still a lot of work to do to bring more girls to snooker and nurture their talent, the WWS tour has a real purpose and there are clubs and coaches ready to invest themselves to the task.

There are currently 125 players on tour. One more qualifying event is to be played in Australia in July. Invitational tour cards, if any, are yet to be announced.