Moment of the Month: July: Neil Robertson thrills crowd by making consecutive home finals

There have been some spectacular moments already on my moment of the year countdown, and today we go back to July when my moment of the month was Neil Robertson's performance at the Australian Open to reach a second final in two years on home soil. This is how he did it:

The Australian Open was the main action of July in the snooker world, and with a few top players deciding not to enter the event it’s always nice that Australia’s snookering hero Neil Robertson plays every year as you’d expect him to, and for him to make a second consecutive Australian Open final in this year’s tournament was certainly a crowd pleasing moment and my moment of July.

Neil made the final of the 2013 Australian Open before losing out to Marco Fu, so when he got to the final this time around the people of Bendigo were certainly hoping that he would go one better in 2014. Things went perfectly according to plan for the “Thunder from Down Under” in the early stages of the tournament with a 5-2 win over Andrew Higginson in the Last 32, a 5-0 whitewash of Jamie Jones in the Last 16, followed by a 5-2 quarter-final victory over Robert Milkins. In the semi-finals he played Mark Davis and there were no problems for Neil in overcoming that particular test as he beat Mark 6-2 to get into the Australian Open final.

In the final he met Judd Trump who himself had been thrilling the crowd with some fantastic snooker all week, and the fans could certainly expect more of the same in the finale to the weeks snooker. There would certainly have been some extra nerves for Robertson in the match as he tried to win a ranking event in his home country in front of all of his family and friends back in Australia, who he also visited while he was out there. The nerves didn’t show in the early stages as he was level at 3-3 after six frames before Trump went on a blistering spell of five frames in a row either side of the session break to go a frame from victory at 8-3 and Neil could only win the next couple of frames to delay the inevitable before Judd sealed a 9-5 win.

Neil Robertson is a great ambassador for snooker as a hard working player that has got where he is at the top of the work through dedication to his snooker and to keep improving and become the best player he possibly can be. The aim of taking a tournament over to Australia would’ve been to try and produce some more Australian snooker players and for Neil to come home and make consecutive finals will hopefully inspire some young Australians watching on the TV some inspiration to pick up a cue and hopefully take up the game having seen the great successes of one of their own in Neil. If in 10 years we have an Australian player or two coming through the amateur ranks to professional level having been inspired by Robertson than it would’ve made all of the effort worth it I’m sure, as disappointed as he’ll be not to have won his home event… yet. To achieve what he has done though is fantastic and more than worthy of my moment of the month for July.

That was a fantastic moment for Australia's population of snooker players and fans, and there are more crowd pleasers to come tomorrow as we look at August's moment of the month.