Reporter experience -Snooker with Joe Williams
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00:00When I think of snooker halls, I get visions of dark rooms, hushed silence, and despite
00:1117 years since the smoking ban, cigarette smoke, some perceptions are hard to shift.
00:16But with participation dwindling in the UK, I've been invited down to Waterlooville
00:19Sports Bar by Nick Fagan, Portsmouth singles champion, to try my hand at snooker.
00:25Now I've played pool on a number of occasions, but I've never covered myself in glory.
00:29Let's see how I get on with a bigger table, and more complex rules.
00:36So I'm Nick Fagan, I'm current Portsmouth singles champion, and yeah, I've been playing
00:44the game for 25 years or so now, so misspent youth and then slightly misspent adulthood
00:50I guess.
00:51Yeah, yeah.
00:52And so yeah, how did you get into it?
00:54So firstly my stepdad, he's a very good pool player, so he used to drag me along and teach
00:59me how to hold a cue and all of that side of it.
01:01And then a close friend of mine is a professional on tour, and as a junior, we used to get the
01:07same school bus, and after a while he just encouraged me to come in and that was it then.
01:12I think once I entered the snooker club once, that was me sold, and every day after that,
01:15after school I was in there picking out balls, and yeah, that was childhood gone.
01:21And you were saying, obviously originally from Leicester, the snooker club you went
01:24to had quite a few greats going through the doors.
01:26Yeah, so Willie Thorns was the snooker club.
01:30It's no longer there sadly, but it was, they had 24 tables, and every weekend they'd have
01:35a junior tournament on one day and then a pro-am where you'd get so many of the top
01:40professionals go through, so at the club you had the likes of Mark Selby, Tom Ford, then
01:45you had Judd Trump, I believe Stephen Hendry went through at one stage, Stephen Maguire,
01:50Sean Murphy, so really you'll hear them reference it quite a lot on TV, it is one of those places
01:56that was a complete hotbed, and just fortunately it was 20 minutes from my house, so that's
02:01where I learnt the game, but had all of that on my doorstep, watching those people play.
02:06Obviously I'm here to try it out today, one to look silly and you can laugh at me, but
02:11also there's a more serious point in terms of the state of snooker in the UK at the moment.
02:17Yeah, it's a real tricky one with snooker at the moment, because globally it's doing
02:21great, in the Far East in particular there's more and more professionals every single
02:26year, but locally it is, I don't want to be dramatic, it is dying off slightly, every
02:32year another snooker club seems to close, clubs have fewer tables each year because
02:38the demand is for more pool, it's easier, it's more accessible, and in some people's
02:43eyes it's more fun, so financially it makes sense to have pool tables over snooker tables,
02:49but we are at a really delicate stage where I think this generation just, you're not seeing
02:54the youth come to the big tables, they're stopping and sticking with the pool unfortunately.
03:00There are tournaments all year, and for me one of the big things that I think is missing
03:05is the coverage of things like the qualifiers and stuff, I actually think that's sometimes
03:09more exciting, we've all seen Henry Robertson, Higgins, Bronio Sullivan, we've seen all of
03:14those hundreds of times, I actually think some of the kids coming through, it's exciting
03:19to see fresh faces, Darts for example, Luke Littler coming through, that's kind of what
03:25gets people excited about the game, it gives you something to aspire to, so for me it doesn't
03:30have to be the big ticket Far East events they're covering, but get some qualifiers
03:34on the red button and so forth, and get some viewing numbers.
03:45It took a little while to get used to the bigger table, but surprisingly I didn't make a complete
03:54fool of myself, and the additional need for accuracy provided a fun challenge, and Nick's
03:58passion for the sport was infectious. It's definitely something I could see myself playing
04:02again in the future, I'd recommend people to try it as well. It seemed the thinking person's version
04:07of pool, test cricket compared to T20 if you will. Snooker has a place in British sporting tradition,
04:13it would be a real shame if the next generation don't take up the sport.