This site

Reminder about this site

Monique This site

Yesterday I decided to block our resident troll from commenting. It was not about their constant negativity, it was not about their rather irritating micro aggressions, it was not even about their unacceptable contempt for the young Chinese players for not being fluent in English or not feeling at ease being interviewed in English.

It was about a post that none of you saw hopefully. That post was, to their own admission hearsay … “my mate told me…”. But what it said could have had serious consequences for Ronnie’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, it was libel. It could have had serious consequences for this site too: if you allow libel on your site, you help spreading it and you are complicit hence accountable.

Therefore I took the actions I saw fit.

This is just a reminder that there are limits to alleged “freedom of speech” and libel is definitely off-limits. I will not tolerate it.

Important reminder about this blog

Monique This site

Yesterday evening, for only the second time since I started this blog in the summer of 2015, I blocked someone from commenting. I hate doing that. My generation, the “flower power” one, fought for freedom, and freedom of speech. Altough this ended up in “political correctness nonsense” – which I hate – I still believe in, and value, freedom of speech.

The right to voice an opinion though, isn’t the right to be agressive, insulting, and a bully. I will not tolerate that.

That person has been all of this, and I have been very patient, maybe even for too long.

Yesterday, that person, in a comment that I have “unapproved” branded Jordan Brown a “lowlife”. That definitely crossed the line for me.

Jordan Brown is a young man, who dreamed to be a snooker player from a young age. He got on the tour in 2009/10. He didn’t succeed. He continued to work on his game, whilst finding day jobs to earn a living. Three years ago, he was working in a garage, on a low salary. He was also practicing hard. He got back on the tour. Last August he qualified for the Crucible, three weeks ago he reached a quarter-finals stage for the first time, two day ago, he became a ranking event winner, having beaten Mark Selby, Stephen Maguire and Ronnie on his way to the title. Far from being a “lowlife”, he’s an inspiration and someone many youngsters should look up to. 

 

Whilst there is no snooker …

Monique This site

Whilst there is no live snooker, I will once again try to scan this site for broken links and missing videos. A lot of those I added at the start of the season are gone again unfortunately and I never got news from my friend who traveled to Thailand and disappeared. I will focus on finding matches footages as a priority. If I happen to find punditry as well, great.

Meanwhile, sports events are about to resume in China, starting with the very popular basket-ball. This was shared on twitter. I’m afraid that in Europe, with some countries unable or unwilling to enforce the needed measures, we might be stuck in this crisis for much longer.

This site … call for help / advice

Monique This site

Ok guys and gals, this is an unusual post and not a happy one.

Over the summer, a friend and myself worked on adding content to this site, and finding/fixing missing content. The friend in particular worked extremely hard in finding lots of footages – mainly punditry stuff – from Asian sources, and publish them. By the end of August, thanks to their help, we had removed/replaced all missing content and added a lot of new one.

Early September, after the Huizhou exhibition, they went to holiday in Thailand … and vanished. I had a message on twitter telling me that they were in Thailand, and ok, but nothing since. They were supposed to come back on September 9, but I have no news and messages stayed unanswered. I have no clue as to what happened and I’m worried. I honnestly hope they are OK.

Simultaneously with their disappearance, the account(s) they used to publish the videos were removed, or made private. I can’t possibly tell. This caused hundreds of broken links here. It’s nothing as compared to the worries over my friends wellbeing, but it’s something I have to try to fix and I’m working on it. I will surely need another week at least. I know there are lots of content I won’t find back easily, but at least I’m trying to identify what’s missing.

Now if anyone can give me advice about a good tool to find broken links, please come forward with suggestions. In particular, the tools I found fail to identify broken embedded youtube video links. This is one of the reason why we favoured vimeo over youtube whenever possible. Broken vimeo links are easy to track.

Thank you in advance for your patience and help.

 

 

 

Great Summer Work and Cleaning

Monique Snooker, This site

RonHardWork

Whilst others rest … we are working on this site!

We have been chasing broken links and missing videos all over the 2015/16/17 seasons (mainly). As you surely know youtube videos tend to disappear after a while, so a lot of the Eurosport features and punditry had gone missing. With the invaluable help of a dear friend, I have been able to restore a lot of them over the last weeks and it’s still work in progress. We have also found a few “new” ones: those have been added.

Amongst them a series of short Master Classes that Ronnie did during the 2016 English Open. You will find them in the gallery: here is the page. 

Aftermath of the SnookerRoomxit

Monique This site

Shortly after the World Championship, it was announced that SnookerRoom was no more. However, for a few weeks, its wealth of snooker videos remained available, and, as many, I hoped they would stay even if the streaming was gone. No more so, the SnookerRoom youtube channel has well and truly been taken down.

I anyone wonders why I supported the site and its team despite it being illegal, please read this post. I haven’t changed my stance.

An immediate result of the loss of the SnookerRoom channel, is that lots of videos on this site now have broken links. I have started to look for replacements and managed to an extend…

Currently all last season’s Ronnie matches and performances are available again except:

  • his last 128 match vs Hamza Akbar in the German Masters qualifiers although I have found the last 3 frames, without sound.
  • The Masters day 3: Ronnie and Mark Selby post match interviews, plus Ronnie Wood interview
  • Part of his Championship League Snooker 2016 matches: only two matches of the Winners Group day 1 are missing now.
  • The videos of his and Neil Robertson punditry work with Matt Smith, Colin Murray and Jimmy White at the German Masters.

I haven’t removed the broken links, as their presence helps me to keep track on what is still missing.

I want to thank kdr for his well appreciated help, please check the comments section. Unfortunarely I have not managed to embed the youku.com videos properly in this blog.

Thank you for your patience.

And once again, thanks to SnookerRoom and the team behind it, who stepped up when the “legal” options failed us.

 

 

 

A short word ahead of this afternoon match

Monique This site

This afternoon, at 1 pm local time, Ronnie will play Mark Selby in the first quarter final of the Masters 2016. Going by what we have seen in the last 16, this will be a tough tough match for Ronnie to win. Mark Selby was impressive against Ricky Walden although he wasn’t really tested. Ronnie certainly looked vulnerable against Mark Williams and his long potting in particular wasn’t what it should be to compete at the highest level. Mark Selby is the favourite today.

That said, Ronnie was in the practice area for a long session yesterday: he was already there when I arrived around noon and only returned to the media room around the time the afternoon match finished. There is no doubts that he’s going to try his best, he prepared as well as he could certainly.

If Ronnie loses, please remember that this is only a match of snooker. If you are a Ronnie fan, you may be disappointed -he will certainly be – but get some perspective and refrain from slagging either players off. They are both out to try to win. The Selby fans will be happy, no doubts, and the same message goes on to them too. Ronnie and Mark are fierce rivals but they respect each other, they are very different persons, but they don’t hate each other. I’m asking the fans from both who wish to comment on this site to be fair to the players and civil to other fans.

And if Ronnie wins, happy days for me … but all the same, I won’t tolerate any disparaging comment regarding Mark Selby on this site.