BY Elliott West
Introduction
The amateur snooker circuit has long been a topic of conversation and snooker’s holding of this year’s Q School has just intensified this debate, highlighting the chasm that exists between amateur and professional players. The intense qualification process of this school sadly didn’t propel many amateurs onto the main tour and the majority of players who did get through, were ex-professionals who had only recently fallen off it, Dean Young being an exception.
The Problem
Both the youth game and the amateur game has been in the shadows for some years and sadly dropped off the radar of the IBSF and the WPBSA. It is true that the prestigious English Amateur Championship still exists, the oldest tournament in snooker, first held in 1916. There has been the occasional exception with Darren Morgan lifting countless pieces of silverware on the amateur circuit but bear in mind, the Welshman was a long and established professional before he became an amateur again. 14-year-old Stan Moody is another player who is dominating the junior circuit.
There seems to be a lack of investment in the amateur game and with an inflated 128 players on the main tour, it is very hard to cross that divide and attain a tour card when the professionals are guaranteed two years on the tour. In recent weeks, disquiet has been coming from some quarters of the snooker community that this needs to be changed once and for all. Gary Filtness, a former professional player and now a regular on the World Seniors tour came up with an action plan that has legs and seems to be a good way of making this negative into a positive. It is as follows:
“Been a lot of debate about what I said about Q School and the amateur game and I done it to get the proper talk going as something has got to change and it’s clear the fact we got more serious seniors events going on than junior events is showing in the people who are getting through q school and getting back on tour”.
“If you want to change this is what I’d do. Cut the tour in half and give them pros a bit of first-round loser money so they can live. Make tour cards one year, if you can’t prove yourself over 30 events as being one of the top 48 players then you don’t deserve to stay there”.
“16 on and off every season”.
“Take the other 64 current pros and create a proper competitive amateur snooker tour where these players and the other top juniors are playing on a proper tour with proper prize money and tour cards at the end of it”.
“Let them compete in the clubs like the seniors do to qualify for some tv-events where they win 8 cards.
Win the other 8 through the current q school, maybe 6 here in the UK and 2 from an Asian Q School”.
“Only World Snooker can save the amateur snooker tour as it can’t be saved with goodwill alone, it needs money as all business does.
So this year q school had 200 entries at a grand, usually its at least 300 entries, can’t cost more than 30 grand to put on so worse case there is a massive profit”.
“As some have said run it as not for profit and put this amount each year into a proper amateur snooker company run by professional people who know what they are doing and get paid for it”.
“Overnight you could have well over 100 grand a year to use to run a proper amateur tour with top players of all ages. Those other 64 pros and top amateurs could have a 200k prize pot to play for each year and may actually also need to get a part-time job or get into some coaching and give back to the game”.
“Get these events on tv or streamed as these players need to start playing under pressure for proper prize money”.
“Use, and pay, some of the former greats of the game to help make it commercial”.
“Amateur game needs a leader with a vision, not afraid to shake it up a bit. Pay the right people the right money and you will get results”.
Of course, this is not a perfect model and there will always be people who would want to go further or tweak the present process. One of the main problems of the amateur game is just the lack of youth players now picking up a cue. With fewer snooker clubs and youth clubs now almost non-existent, it needs a massive campaign to attract young talent but hopefully, Jason Ferguson and others are starting to address this issue. It won’t be easy but it is possible and especially now as the mist of the pandemic lockdown is starting to lift.
