Snooker drives me loopy

Published:

RONNIE O’Sullivan was spot on when he said snooker should be brightened up.

A snooker match has less atmosphere than an afternoon tea dance at a Darby and Joan club.

There are more blue rinses on show than the Rangers strips being put on spin dry.

Snooker has become too reverential – cough and you are black balled, sneeze and you are outlawed.

At least the Rocket tries to bring some life to the game, by playing left handed and going for impossible shots.

He is a shining light in a dull world of green baize, like Will Smith in I Am Legend – the only spark of life in a world full of zombies.

Brighten snooker up – if I wanted to sit through three hours of tedium I would have watched Rangers shut up shop in two UEFA Cup games last season.

To lighten the mood, why not introduce a handicap system, the better players can wear boxing gloves to hamper their cueing action.

They should also be forced to use the wee cues you get with the wee six-foot snooker tables.

Or even try toothpicks with chalk – that would be a real leveller.

Put obstacles on the table, and holes as well, so it becomes like pinball.

The game needs characters like Canadian legend Bill Werbenuik.

During the World Championships at the Sheffield Crucible, the toilets were renamed the Bill Werbenuik lounge, because he needed so many toilet breaks.

His reliance on lager got so extreme that when scheduled to play at 10 in the morning, he was forced to rise at 6am in order to hammer back eight pints.

Big Bill would then down a pint in each frame, before retiring to the bar at the end of the day for what he termed ‘a social drink’.

It was the norm for him to guzzle more than 20 pints a day and often more.

His eating habits were just as bad and he went to the doctor because he didn’t feel well.

“What do you eat?” asked the doctor.

“For breakfast, I have a couple of red snooker balls, and at lunchtime I grab a black, a pink and two yellows. I have a brown with my tea in the afternoon, then a blue and another pink.”

“I know why you’re ill", said the doctor. “You’re not getting enough greens!”

Film star Daniel Radcliffe recently tried his hand at snooker while in the West End in a major play. His role was a down and out, so he required a long straggly beard – he was a Hairy Potter.

Instead, now we have soor-faced potters like Stephen Hendry who claim their game has more ‘class’ than darts.

Hendry wants to avoid following darts down the road of going more glitzy.

The Scot does not want fans drinking at games and shouts of encouragement.

But the sport is dying fast, and unless it’s brought into the modern world, they will be snookered.

Darts is so different, full of glamour, although admittedly tacky, and excitement.

The figure of the daily calorie intake of the majority of the tungsten stars has more zeroes on the end than Kaka’s transfer fee to Manchester City.

With the tacky bling they also have more rings than a 1,000-year-old oak tree.

But it is exciting, and that is what counts.

And that is why fans are flocking to darts events, and there is a huge exodus from the snorefest of snooker.