Here comes more of a personal blog. As many of you who have followed the blog over the years will know, I like to put something up on the anniversary/birthday of the blog every year and today marks four years since I started up this little corner of the internet where I like to give the information, thoughts and opinions that I have on this great sport.
Incorporated within this blog I will reflecting on my time in Cardiff watching the Welsh open from Wednesday to the final on Sunday of last week. It really was a cracking week and great credit has to go to Stuart Bingham for his performance to take the title, but also to Judd Trump - it takes two to make a brilliant final.
FOUR MORE YEARS
So it has been four years since I set up this page now and I still enjoy writing the features that make up what I do more than ever. The Stat Attack has been back and better than ever in the last six months. That and the tournament top ten are certainly here to stay.
What I am going to end is the tradition of promising new features that don't quite happen. I am fairly happy with the way I go about things at the moment. Maybe during the quiet summer months some new content and features may come in, but while the calendar is busy the preview blogs I do now see a lot of work.
Thanks come again to all of those who read and share the blog on Twitter, to Shaun Murphy for his help with promoting the blog, my Twitter page and for his help when I visit tournaments. I would also like to thank the great Robin Hull, his help sharing the blog on Twitter insured that the Live Blog for the Last 32 in the Welsh Open last week, featuring his match with Stuart Carrington, was the most viewed blog in my history. One retweet insured his fans were aware of my blog and saw this live commentary get more views in Finland than anywhere else in the world.
I have had more chance to do live blogs in the last year and I would like to continue that. It is one of the most enjoyable things about being at the venues live, to give you readers information on the non-TV games. Hopefully there will be even more of that in the next 12 months. As my Twitter followers will already be aware I have an expressed an interest in the provisional calendar and the 10 days of qualifiers that are scheduled for August. With a bit of sponsorship or extra funds I would be able to go and cover all 10 days, but without that I do not have the finances to support 11 nights in a hotel for example.
WELSH OPEN WEEK
I arrived in Cardiff on Wednesday afternoon, and swiftly jinxed Mr Murphy. As usual he was defeated whilst I was at the venue, and this time it was within a matter of hours. To be fair he did have bronchitis and spent the time between his Cardiff exit and the Championship League this week just resting and recovering and still is not at 100%.
It was fun to see Robin Hull up close at a venue, I was not able to see much of him in Cardiff in 2016 and he was out of the English Open before I arrived in Manchester in October. As I have mentioned my live blog which he shared on his Twitter page was the most viewed in my history and I now seem to have a lot of fans in Finland.
Igor Figueiredo had a great week to make the Last 16, I'm not sure anyone saw that coming but he played really well, scored heavily and just reminded everyone of how good he can be when he enters tournaments, which he has not always been able to do with great frequency.
Scott Donaldson's run to the semi-finals was refreshing. It was nice to see young British talent having a good run and many have said before that he has got a bright future. He gave Trump a decent game in the semi-finals as many in the crowd seemed to think it would be a walkover, including the presenter for BBC Wales who we could hear from my seat at the back of the crowd, as they filmed their opening link on the first floor balcony.
Again there were positive runs from Yan Bingtao and Zhou Yuelong, the deadly World Cup winning duo who have been impressive ever since that victory. Yan's win against Selby on the Thursday on the TV table was not one I got to see a great deal of from my position watching tables 6,7 and 8 that afternoon. However, his performance the night before against Thor Chuan Leong was a very impressive one for me, at 3-1 down he did not look anywhere near his best and Thor was playing quite well. A couple of sloppy errors from Thor left Yan able to dig in and punish him and it showed all the signs of a very classy player, being able to win when he was not firing on all cylinders.
I was really pleased to see Stuart Bingham win on Sunday. It was richly deserved for him to win his first title since becoming world champion. He gives a lot of his time up at the venue to sign autographs and do pictures for the fans and was doing so on arrival at the venue before both sessions of the final against Trump. Trump had a lot of great support in and all of his family were in attendance and with this being his closest event to home it was great to see.
Speaking of attendance... the crowds in Wales were fantastic last week and it brings me on to an important point. This is one of only two events in Wales per season and it is no coincidence based on that, that the turnout was brilliant all through the week. The venue is ideally situated in the centre of Cardiff with three of four hotels nearby and easily accessible. This could not be further apart from Event City in Manchester where the English Open was held back in October. It also highlighted that there may just be too many events in England this season, as the poor crowds at the English Open and much more recently the World Grand Prix in Preston displayed. By contrast, all of the European Tour events were well attended as these were the only events in the calendar in many of the selected countries such as Bulgaria and Poland. However, they have kept the Gibraltar Open which comes up next week and will hopefully see a much improved crowd on its first staging. That's the end of that little rant.
All in all I think the message of this blog was thank you for reading and supporting the blog and that hopefully things will continue for a while yet, and i'll be attending some more venues in the future. My experiences in great cities like Cardiff certainly keep up my enjoyment of being at venues and writing about snooker.
No comments:
Post a Comment