Player of the Month: June: Joe Perry

It's time for day 6 of my look back on the best players of 2014 and this time I'm looking back on June where my player of the month June and these were my thoughts on him:

The Wuxi Classic was the main event of June with the Yixing Open Asian Tour event preceding it. Joe was one of the stand out performers making the Last 16 of the Yixing Open before losing to defending champion Ding Junhui, then making the final of the Wuxi Classic where he was incredibly unlucky to miss out on his first full ranking event title in a decider to his good friend Neil Robertson. Earlier in the tournament Joe overcame amateur Chen Zifan and Robert Milkins without dropping a single frame, along with wins against Liang Wenbo, Robin Hull and Martin Gould. On any other day Joe would’ve won the final and it’s really a great shame that he didn’t because he certainly deserves to win a big title, and hopefully his time will come in the future, because he certainly still has the game for it as he showed in June on his run to the final in Wuxi.

These were some of my picks of Joe Perry’s matches in June:

Joe Perry 5-0 Robert Milkins – As early as the Last 32 Joe had an incredibly tough match against a brilliant player in Robert Milkins. Joe made very light work of what could’ve been a tricky encounter on the day though, and showed some of the form that would eventually take him to the final, whitewashing the Milkman including breaks of 51, 53, 69 and 90 to cap a fine performance and one that certainly sums up Joe Perry’s June.

Neil Robertson 10-9 Joe Perry – Breaks of 49 and 56 helped Joe into an early 3-0 lead in this final, and he may have been forgiven for thinking a little further ahead and at least from here taking an end of session lead in this huge final as he eyed up a major ranking title. Neil dominated the next two frames losing to 2-3, before breaks of 74 and 61 in the sixth frame gave Perry some more breathing space at 4-2. 72 from Robertson kept Perry under pressure at 3-4 before a 47 from the gentleman guaranteed an end of session lead that he’d have desired at 5-3. The session ended at 5-4 to Perry but Robertson soon equalised in the final session at 5-5. 68 from Perry put him back ahead at 6-5, though the Australian won all of the next three frames to lead 8-6. However, Joe didn’t give in and won the next three frames himself with breaks of 54, 41 and 93 to go one frame from the title with two to play leading 9-8. It took a brilliant response from Neil to break Joe’s heart and win the match as he won the final two frames with runs of 87 and 78 as Perry was left powerless to Neil’s scoring. However, that doesn’t take the shine off of what was a superb week for Perry.

Joe is a fantastic player with a brilliant all round game who has worked hard to get back into the top 16 in the last couple of years and deserves to be there and deserves to win a few more events before the lights go out in his career. Practising with Neil Robertson has clearly helped him and he’s taken to the changes in snooker professionally, playing in most events and you can tell from his attitude that all he wants is the best thing for the game of snooker to be played in the fairest conditions possible and for that he’s a player that deserves to do well and deserves recognition when he does do well.

 

Joe Perry is a decent contender for my player of 2014 after the year or so that he's had and in my view he's been very impressive, but you'll have to wait until January 2nd to find out who wins it. Tomorrow i'll be revealing my player of the month for July so stick around for that.