Here are the reports by WST on day 3 in Belfast:
Morning and afternoon sessions
Perry Equals Highest Career Break
Joe Perry made a tremendous 145 total clearance during a 4-3 victory over Michael White as he edged into the third round of the BetVictor Northern Ireland Open in Belfast.
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Perry, a pro since 1991, equalled his best ever break and also set a new target for the £5,000 high break with his superb 145 total clearance in frame three. The Cambridgeshire cueman also made a 99 in the second frame and a 66 in the decider to beat Welshman White and set up a tie with Hossein Vafaei or Anton Kazakov.
World number 27 Perry, who won the BetVictor Welsh Open in 2022, has struggled for form so far this season but hopes today’s performance could be a turning point.
“It was a really good game and I’m happy with how I played,” Perry told Eurosport. “It was great to be out there in a big venue with a good crowd, you can sometimes falter under the lights but in general it brings the best out of me and makes me try harder. I have had two good runs to the semi-finals here in the past and hopefully I can go deep again this week.”
Ricky Walden also won 4-3, beating Dominic Dale in a marathon battle which lasted three hours and eight minutes. Breaks of 83, 68 and 93 helped Walden go 3-1 up before Dale recovered to 3-3. The decider came down to a long safety battle on the colours, and Walden had a slice of good fortune as he missed the blue to a baulk corner but fluked a snooker. He later converted a tricky pot on the blue to earn a meeting with Stuart Bingham.
“I really had to dig deep, Dominic is such a class player,” said Walden. “I rode my luck in the end. I was feeling a lot of pressure because I feel something is bubbling in my game, but you have to stay in tournaments to show that. I feel I am playing well and I’m prepared to play the big shots when I need to. I believe I can build some momentum and catapult back up the rankings.”
BetVictor European Masters champion Barry Hawkins saw off Jiang Jun 4-1 with a top break of 81, while Bingham top scored with 118 in a 4-1 defeat of Xu Si.
Trump Stays On Target For Title Trio
Judd Trump, unquestionably the best player in the world on current form, took another step towards a third consecutive ranking title as he thrashed Julien Leclercq 4-0 to reach the last 32 of the BetVictor Northern Ireland Open.
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Only four players in snooker history – Ray Reardon, Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry and Ding Junhui – have previously won three ranking titles in a row, but Trump looks hard to stop as he aims to join that elite group. The 24-year-old has already lifted the BetVictor English Open and Wuhan Open this month and tonight took his streak to 15 consecutive matches. He needs five more to capture another trophy.
The Bristol cueman needed just 45 minutes to beat Belgium’s Leclercq, knocking in breaks of 108, 108 and 55. His next opponent will be Ian Burns. who beat Ken Doherty 4-2.
“I hadn’t seen a lot of Julien before so I didn’t know what to expect, but I got off to a good start and kicked on from there,” said world number three Trump. “I still don’t feel completely sharp, I’m not quite as confident as I was in the previous two tournaments, but every day in practice I’m getting a bit sharper and if I can reach the quarter-finals I could be back in form.
“When you’ve won a lot of matches you start looking over your shoulder because you know it can’t go on for ever. It’s important not to get negative, you have to keep trying to win win rather than trying not to lose. I’ve had those kind of spells before and it happened to Mark Allen last season when he was on a good run. You can get a bit negative and go into your shell. This time, even if I lose I will go out playing the way I want to play.”
Local favourite Robbie McGuigan suffered a cruel 4-3 defeat against Anthony McGill, who had needed three snookers at 3-1 down. Wild card McGuigan, age 19, top scored with 66 to lead 3-1, and he was on the verge of victory at 39 points ahead on the colours in frame five. But canny McGill laid a series of tough snookers on the yellow to get the penalty points he needed, and eventually snatched the frame on a respotted black. That proved the turning point as the Scot controlled the next two frames and earned a third round tie with Noppon Saengkham or Barry Pinches.
“I don’t think I have ever won a match like that, where I needed three snookers,” said two-time ranking event winner McGill. “Robbie still looked composed after that. It’s one of those painful defeats for him, but there’s no doubt he will get on the tour. I was very impressed by him. It will be one of those matches he looks back on – I have had loads of them. He will learn, he’s a fantastic player.
“He punched the air when he was 39 ahead on the yellow. I said to him at the end, I don’t mind the fist pump, but maybe do it after the handshake. It didn’t fire me up at all, I’m not like that. In fact I was thinking that he deserved the match.”
McGill is trying a graphite cue for the first time this week and added: “I haven’t made my mind up about it yet. It’s good enough to use but I am still trying to get used to it. I practised with it last week and decided to take a chance and use it at a tournament. I’m not in a good run of form anyway so if I’d had my wooden cue I probably would have lost by now.”
Stephen Maguire fired breaks of 132 and 85 as he came from 2-1 down to beat James Cahill 4-2, while Jak Jones wrapped up a 4-2 victory over Mark Davis with a career-best 143 total clearance.
All the detailed results are on snooker.org as always.
The Judd Trump v Julien Leclercq is the only match I watched in full. For the first two frame Judd looked unplayable. The other two frames were actually close. In frame three Julien missed a black off the spot, probably concentrating on position. That probably cost him the frame. In the last frame he was ahead, fouled the white whilst removing the extended rest from a difficult spot near the cushion, after playing a pink. It cost him six important points. Julien owned to the foul that neither the ref, nor Judd had seen. Judd acknowledged his sportsmanship, which was nice to see.
Ross Muir came on twitter later, asking if everyone had suffered from ocular migraine and found an efficient way to cure it or minimise its impact. So, apparently, the issue is back and it’s extremely painful. Unfortunately for Ross, I’m afraid that there isn’t really any cure and it’s extremely “disabling” when it kicks in.
WST has also published the “program” for the opening day at the 2023 Scottish Open
Snooker Superstars To Align On Day One In Edinburgh
A raft of the sport’s biggest names are set to compete on day one of the BetVictor Scottish Open in Edinburgh, with home hero John Higgins, World Champion Luca Brecel, world number one Ronnie O’Sullivan, defending champion Gary Wilson, Mark Allen, Judd Trump, Mark Selby and many more scheduled for Monday December 11th.
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The match schedule on the opening day is:
10.00 am session
M1 Gary Wilson v Elliot Slessor
M14 Mark Selby v Sean O’Sullivan
M17 Ding Junhui v David Grace
M6 Jimmy Robertson v Amaan Iqbal1.00 pm session
M10 Ronnie O’Sullivan v Liam Graham
M3 Mark Williams v Sam Craigie
M11 Barry Hawkins v Pang Junxu
M13 Ali Carter v Zehuang LongNot before 2pm
M18 Luca Brecel v Iulian Boiko
M15 Shaun Murphy v Liu Hongyu
M2 Hossein Vafaei v Daniel Wells
M12 Jack Borwick v Ishpreet Singh Chadha7.00 pm session
M9 Judd Trump v Sydney Wilson
M4 Kyren Wilson v Mostafa Dorgham
M7 Robert Milkins v Mark Davis
(Rd2 match)Not before 8.00 pm
M16 John Higgins v Oliver Brown
M5 Mark Allen v Jamie Jones
M8 Jack Lisowski v Mohamed Ibrahim
(Rd2 match)The full draw and format for Edinburgh will be announced after the completion of the qualifying round, which finishes on November 2nd.
The way things are going this season, I’m not holding my breath over Ronnie’s participation.
And this by Mark Allen on twitter
Note that Mark doesn’t say that his comments were untrue . 1 I’m also 99% sure that Mark was hard pressured to come out with these tweets. It’s very unlike him to back off like this. I don’t like this at all. If WST disagrees with some players comments, they have a right to respond and they should use it. Gagging the players simply isn’t right.
It’s the top players who bring the money, not the lowest ranked ones. They all started at the bottom. Ronnie won 76 of the 78 matches he played in Blackpool in his first year as a pro. Nobody did him a favour, he earned it. Now that many “big names” are nearing the end of their career, they should be allowed to cash on their image, status, reputation and success. They earned it. They will get no “retirement” money, they are self-employed. There should be NO restrictions whatsoever regarding what they are allowed play in and when. It’s up to WST to make their own events attractive enough to keep them on board. That’s my opinion and I stand by it.
- I’m not entirely convinced that there was anything untrue either in what Hector Nunns published that got him in trouble BTW. ↩︎
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
While I most happily agree with Monique most of the time and on most of the issues, this, sadly, is not one of them.
So, here goes:
1. While it may well be that the top players bring in the money, it’s at lest partly the lower-ranked players that allow the top to shine. So, one ought not underestimate their contribution, even if it’s just by contrast. Moreover, without those (beginning) at the bottom, learning and thriving, there is no future for snooker. So, taking care of them, not just the (current) money-makers, is mandatory for a healthy future.
2. No one, but not a single one, does it all on their own. They, from Plato via Einstein to, yes, O’Sullivan stand on the shoulders, and profit from the legacy, of prior greats, from whom to learn and to whose achievements to aspire.
3. O’Sullivan received a host of gifts, namely in the form of established structures, a tournament circuit (no matter how rudimentary at the time), those then-greats who commanded the attention O’Sullivan then got the opportunity to steal, and, not least, his talent, which he didn’t make and also not develop all alone. Gifts galore, and the smarter of the greats would not hesitate to acknowledge them. With nothing but some backwater pub to play in, none of us would have have heard his name, much less would we have O’Sullivan’s spectacular career to celebrate.
4. Those who are nearing retirement should have made provision for it throughout their careers, as freelancers are supposed to do everywhere and in every occupation. They are, however, not supposed to do that in such a way as to damage the profession that provided them with the opportunities they have had, which need to be preserved for those coming after them.
5. The Makau Five have every opportunity to play in exhibitions even at a higher age (see Jimmy White for clues), and they have that opportunity right now, just not in ways that conflict with WST tournaments. Complaining about the gaps in the tournament calendar while also failing to schedule exhibitions during these same gaps, looks like a red herring, if not an attempted act of sabotage, to me.
6. Now, I see, maybe, a partial agreement in that no restrictions shall be imposed on players’ earning opportunities that cannot be justified by a genuine concern for the future of snooker, its stable development, including the profits that underpin it (decrying these profits while demanding higher expenses for the royalties’ royal treatment looks self-contradictory). Which restrictions are necessary, if any, and which should be deemed unjustifiable and excessive, is (at least should be) for the whole bunch of WST-affiliated players to debate and work out. Thereafter, once something approaching consensus is achieved, they should then move collectively to renegotiate their contracts with the WST, if change is desired. Neither should the snooker royalty get to breach the terms of their contracts (for otherwise why have contracts at all?), nor should the WST be allowed to dictate these terms like autocrats do. That latter, of course, depends in large part on the solidarity among players, and the players’ bargaining position may be damaged if this solidarity is weakened, undercut by greed and selfishness.
Anyway, I am having good (snooker) days currently, with some inspiring youth giving the older ones some tough nuts to crack, even European ones among them. I could hardly be more pleased with what I’ve seen so far – and it’s the much decried Home Nations series that provides it. And that’s even though the TV crew makes it as hard as humanly possible to follow the game – cue ball regularly rolling out of the picture, cutting off to the clapping gawkers while the balls are still rolling, and so on – in their base eagerness to capture “the drama”. Someone should let them in on the secret that this is sports, and it happens on the table, not some goofy sitcom, where facial expressions might be of some interest.