The Snooker Thread (Part 2)

Sport
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Day clings on. 9-5 Wilson

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A nice way for Wilson to cap off his great day, a century for the match. Record equalling five centuries in a first round match

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2186

Hopefully he smashes Higgins in the next round.

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Murphy not having this his own way at all.

5-3 down to Si going into last frame of the session.

Big frame this.

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Utterly horrific shot attempting a long pot by Murphy puts Si in.

Missed the red.

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I didn’t realise that Si was the amateur that beat Murphy in the UK which Murphy was giving out about.

Come on Si!

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Will be some laugh if Si beats him

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Big comeback on here. Milkins was 7-2 down against Perry and now has it back to 8-7

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Joe Perry is melting down. Level

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Milkins surely kick on from here.

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John Virgo’s (I think it’s him) cutting comments really adding to the occasion here with both players making lots of errors.

9-8 to Milkins

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Milkins wins 10-9

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The only real comeback in the entire first round

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Joe will need a sports psychologist or speak with someone like Caroline Currid after that. Brutal loss.

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Second round draw almost complete…
O’Sullivan v Vafaei
Brecel v Williams
McGill v Lisowski
Milkins v Murphy/Si Jiahui
Allen v Bingham
Jones v Robertson
Wilson K v Higgins
Wilson G v Selby/Selt

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Just ring my old man’ – on the trail of the real Mark Williams

Snooker’s biggest enigma opens the door on his storied career, with the assistance of his father, Dilwyn

As interviews go, it was not the most promising start. “I’m only doing it because I’ll get fined by World Snooker – trust me if there was no fine I’d be gone,” said Mark Williams, smiling casually at the expectation of players to speak with the media ahead of playing for the Crucible’s £500,000 first prize.

Thirty minutes later, and one of British sport’s biggest enigmas was dictating his dad’s phone number and encouraging me to find out more about the Welsh mining village of Cwm that so shaped their lives.

“Ring my old man – he’ll tell you,” said Williams who, having shown little inclination to answer recurrent questions about his chances of a fourth world title, was rather more engaged on the largely untold story behind his extraordinary career.

“Brought up modestly – father was a miner – you see the struggles they have back in the day so you appreciate what you’ve got,” he said. “If I didn’t make it as a snooker player I’d have been a miner like my father and his father. That’s where everyone ended up. No work about.

“He was the one who would pretend I was going to school and take me to the snooker. My mother thought I was in school. He was the main one who took me to junior tournaments. All that petrol money. It was tough times for miners.”

‘They said they’d prosecute us’

Dilwyn Williams later confirms that assessment, even if he hadn’t quite expected his son to reveal how skipping school helped provide the foundation to become one of snooker’s greatest players.

“He shouldn’t have been telling you that,” says Dilwyn, before going into even more detail about their secret routine.

“I used to pick him up, say, about 12 [noon]. Nobody knew. Take him to the club in Bargoed. Leave him over there all day. I’d then finish the shift down the pit about 10, half-past 10 [pm], go pick him up and fetch him home. Nothing said.

“He didn’t like school. He wouldn’t go out anywhere. He wouldn’t go to parties. He didn’t go drinking or smoking. That’s all he wanted to do.”

Snooker champion Mark Williams playing with a friend at his local poolhall when he was younger

Williams (left) was always happier at the snooker club than at school in his youth CREDIT: Dragon News Picture Agency

But how did the school react?

“They said they’d prosecute us because he was missing so much,” says Dilwyn. “When they found out he was a snooker player – I think he was Welsh champion by then – they just put a photo of him on the wall with his uniform on and nothing else was said. He stuck to it. And it worked out alright.”

With his son now aged 48 and still ranked in the world’s top eight after a glorious professional career spanning more than three decades, it is quite the understatement.

But Dilwyn’s unconventional parenting did not end there. He worked in Cwm’s Marine Colliery from 1967 until it closed in the month of Mark’s 14th birthday in 1989 but, crucially, had already found time to take his young son on an unauthorised visit.

“We weren’t supposed to – but I took him down to where I worked on the [coal] face - it was about three miles underground,” he says. “It was a working mine. The real thing. We went down in a cage holding onto the side. Water, muck, the lot. I took him right into the cutting machine. On his hands and knees. He had to crawl. We shut the lights off and I said, ‘Right, now try to find me’.

“He couldn’t. Didn’t have a clue. He couldn’t see a thing. To show him what a miner had to do was the best thing I ever did. It was the last deep mine in South Wales to close.”

‘If I don’t make it in snooker this is where I’m going’

It is an experience that Mark will never forget. “I got snuck in with these 10 or 15 men – snuck in the middle –and down the lift,” he now says. “It was horrific. The battery pack with a light on was nearly as heavy as me. Awful. I was glad to get back up. But I said to myself, ‘If I don’t make it in snooker this is where I’m going for 12 hours a day’.”

It was an experience that seems also to have shaped a sporting mindset that, if he could bottle it, would be worth billions. For Williams is not just utterly laid back off the table but feels no physically different while playing a deciding frame at the Crucible than in his Tredegar snooker club.

“A lot of players don’t believe it – they think I’m lying – but what’s the point of lying?” says Williams. “I just don’t feel nervous or shake. When I missed a pink to win 18-15 against John Higgins [in the 2018 world final] I just missed it. I went back to my chair, said, ‘How the f— did I miss that?’ Sat down, thought, ‘no problem’ and next frame, popped a nice red in the middle and made a frame-winning break. I love playing snooker. I’m competitive with everything. If I win, great. If I lose, shake hands and forget about it. Not once have I cared.”

It sounds like the perfect outlook, and so you wonder if he has ever had any expert psychological advice?

“Never – and I’m not sure a psychologist would want to come in here” he says, pointing at his head. “They might need a bit of help after that. It’s just not for me. It’s something I can guarantee you I will never do.”

Williams then makes a point of claiming that he is not in the same class as Ronnie O’Sullivan or John Higgins –yet they are all among the top six major winners in snooker history – but does point out their shared longevity. “I’m a bit heavier, a bit balder but still going – crazy,” he says. Dilwyn reckons that his son will still be competing at the age of 70 and will never change. “You see him walking around Cwm or Ebbw Vale and you wouldn’t think he was a professional snooker player,” he says. “He comes home, puts his car in the garage, puts on his tracksuit and goes to play golf.”

And although Mark says that his dad “probably wouldn’t say it to me”, Dilwyn’s pride is obvious. “Proud? Of course. Really proud. Bloody hell, aye. 100 per cent. The first from The Valley to make a name like that. Brilliant.”

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Ronnie
Brecel
Lisowski
Si jaihui
Allen
Robertson
Wilson
Selby

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Ronnie
Williams
McGill
Murphy
Allen
Robertson
Wilson
Selby

Could be some good Quarter Finals

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I’d say Robertson is the one to be on. Love to see lisowski win and he can have no complaints now that trump is gone. Can’t see McGill beating him over 3 sessions

2203
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