Josh Cooper: A blog from an apsiring amateur player

After a large break over the course of July and the early parts of August, snooker is back this weekend in Latvia for the Riga Open which opens the European Tour events for the season. Of course, the amateurs are provided with a fabulous opportunity to compete in these events and one young man hoping to take advantage of this in the coming season is Josh Cooper. Unfortunately Josh hasn't been able to enter Riga or the Paul Hunter Classic coming later on this month but is hoping to play in some of the later ET's and has taken some time out to write a brilliant piece for the blog on him as a snooker player, where he's at with his game at present times and his aspirations for the future.


Without further delay, this is what the man himself had to say:

Hello, I’m Joshua Cooper, 18 years of age and the nephew of snnooker professional Shaun Murphy. I am currently an amateur snooker player trying to emerge through the amateur ranks and then push on to turn professional.

I recently qualified for a place on the English Junior Premier Tour which is the best 48 amateurs in the Country at under 21 level. I earned this place by competing in the u21 Regional Tour where I came 3rd in the North section, along with winning back to back events which were events 5&6, gaining automatic promotion onto the English u21 Premier Tour. I have also previously entered a European Tour Event but sadly I bowed out in the first qualifying round 4-1. It was a great experience for me and I really enjoyed taking part in the event and I am looking to enter as many European Tours as I can this season and hopefully go further than I have done in them previously.

I Currently practice on average around 4 days a week, for around 3 hours a day, but with the premier tour upcoming and entering a few European Tours, then I’m going to start putting in the hours a lot more as you need to if you want to progress in the game of snooker. I try to balance my practice out with solo practice and match practice.

My aim for 2014/2015 will be to keep my place on the Premier tour as it is my first season on there, but I will be there to win it also. Another aim is as I have previously said is to try and play in a lot of the European Tour Events and then depending on how my season has gone I will look into entering Q School to try and earn a place on the tour with the very best, but at the minute that is a long way off and there is a lot of work to be done between now and then.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoyed it, if you have any questions or anything like that then you can contact me either by Twitter @JCooper147 or by Email joshcooper147@hotmail.co.uk.

Thank you.   

I'd like to thank Josh for agreeing to right a piece for me on himself as a young amateur, and I hope it's given you all an insight into things within the amateur game a lot more and hopefully we'll have a lot more pieces like this to come in the near future from other aspiring amateur players.