Nick Metcalfe snooker column: Poor scheduling hurting Tour Championship

The Tour Championship will be a great watch in the coming week, but we'll definitely be complaining about an acute case of deja vu. In fact, I'm not sure we saw this many repeats on the telly over Christmas.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not averse to familiar faces on the screen. I'm feeling a little under the weather at the moment and have been cheering myself up with the antics of Ronnie Barker and co in 50-year-old episodes of the classic BBC comedy, Porridge.

But that doesn't mean I want to see a long list of the same snooker match-ups back-to-back. These Players Series events are generally top value, but they're too closely bunched together this time and it doesn't maximise the product.

I'd imagine most of you reading this column probably caught a fair bit of the Players Championship last week. But don't worry if you did happen to miss Shaun Murphy v Barry Hawkins, Xiao Guodong v Wu Yize, Mark Selby v Si Jiahui or Mark Williams v Ding Junhui. Those very same matches will take place in Manchester on Monday and Tuesday.

In fact, if Murphy, Xiao, Selby and Williams win, we'll see the same quarter-finals as in Telford too.

I doubt any of us will lose sleep over this, but it's not quite the point of these tournaments is it?

One of the beauties of the Players Series is the narratives it provides. Ideally, you need quite a few weeks and maybe even months between the tournaments, so that places in the respective fields can be swapped around.

In past years, they've timed the events far better. Last season, the World Grand Prix was played from January 15th to 21st, the Players Championship was in the week February 19th-25th and then the Tour Championship provided the climax from April 1st to 7th.

I'm sure there are some solid practical reasons for that not being the case in this 2024-25 campaign and the three tournaments instead taking place over a five-week period - doubts over dates for the World Grand Prix in its new host city of Hong Kong may well have been a hindrance - but let's hope it's a one-off.

The Tour Championship blew us away when it was first played in 2019 and it has pretty much an unimpeachable place in the calendar. That said, it could do without being regularly chipped away at.

The 2023 tournament in Hull was blighted by poor crowds, while last year saw the field increased from eight players to 12 for the first time - a move that I argued in a Sporting Life column twelve months ago had taken some of the sheen away from the tournament.

Most of the players seemed to agree with that assessment as it happens. Mark Allen went decidedly off script when he told ITV: "They shouldn't have changed it from eight. They spoiled a really good event and one we all look forward to."

I actually think spoiled might be a bit strong. We'll all really enjoy the tournament in the days to come, especially the reintroduction of longer format matches. It's both a fine event in its own right and the perfect way to further whet our appetites for the Crucible marathon.

But running a sport ultimately comes down to selling your wares and there's no way snooker has done that as well as it could with the Players Series this time round.

Anyway, back to the telly for me. "Norman Stanley Fletcher, You are an habitual criminal, who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner..."

World Championship qualifying an event to celebrate in its own right

Our cup runneth over as snooker lovers right now. We'll roll straight from the Tour Championship into World Championship qualifying at Sheffield's English Institute of Sport.

It was suggested on our Talking Snooker podcast recently that a sure sign of being a proper snooker hipster is to suggest you prefer qualifying to the magical 17-day show that follows.

I certainly would not go that far, but there's no question that the event has now become one to celebrate in its own right, with the action on Judgement Day as thrilling as it gets.

There's a clammy tension about World Championship qualifying that isn't replicated anywhere else, with not just places at the Crucible up for grabs, but tour cards and livelihoods too.

Personally, it tends to strike me that I could do with banking some sleep before the intense fortnight to come. Those plans are very often thwarted by the gripping late night fare that is always thrown up.

We'll never have favourites in this game. So to everyone involved: Play well.

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