English Pool (the small ball game played in an large number of pubs in the UK) doesn’t exactly have the best reputation in the industry and has struggled to grow outside of the UK (there are small pockets elsewhere but not like 9-ball). In my opinion over the last 10-15 years this has been caused in part by the in-fighting amongst the organisers and the fact that there are two governing bodies playing slightly different rules.
This weekend (6th – 7th Sept) we did a live broadcast from the Oracle Super Tour in Leicester. It was massively refreshing to see players from both rule sets playing in a tournament with a decent amount of priz money. Throughout the weekend there was no bickering or sneering about who plays what rules just simply getting on with the action and putting on a performance.
To give you the information, the tournament was being played to WEPF World Rules and had a first prize of £3400.00. The tournament featured former and current world champions and someone called Tony Drago!
I don’t want to go into much detail about the actual tournament because that can be found elsewhere online, what I want to talk about is the quality of some of the matches.
Four matches spring to mind and three of them involved Chris Melling (who it has to be said was flying all weekend!).
The first was Mellings match against Neil Toms, the first frame was utter dross and lasted 26 minutes but then the next 10 frames only took the same amount of time with Melling in particular playing some awesome stuff. The next match featured Mick Hill and Craig Marsh and for me was the pick of the day, I haven’t actually looked through the tapes yet but there must have been 9 or 10 break & runs by either player with Marshy eventually winning 8-7. One of the best adverts for the game of 8-ball pool in my opinion.
Why I suggest it’s a good advert for the game is due to the fact that we recieve viewers from 110 countries and this weekend was no exception with 1300 viewers tuning in to watch the Oracle Super Tour live. If 8-ball pool in is country is going to develop internationall then it is the example set by these players (including the semi-final and final in my list) that will reach the masses. It was almost all out attack and that is ultimately what viewers want to watch and the tactical, defensive shots that were played were also of the highest order.
Since I have owned CueSport TV this is probably the best days pool we have had on the channel and further gives me drive to push both the channel and the game forward.
