We are off to the GB 9 Ball Tour this weekend for the fifth ranking event of the season – the Northern Masters.
It is a while since we have visited GB9 – the last event was in Scarborough and due to circumstances I am not going to dwell on we couldn’t make it!
Imran Majid owns the main tour this year having won all 4 of this years main tour ranking events and in addition one professional event as well. It seems that Imran’s cut break has been giving him an advantage and his confident and assured play does the rest.
This event has a rule change however, instead of the one-ball being racked on the spot the rack will be moved slightly higher with the nine-ball placed on the spot instead.
What difference will this make? Well it should mean it is harder to make a ball in the corners so could jeopardise Imran’s soft cut break as it does need a bit more oomphh to pocket a ball. I think the rule brings the GB9 tour in line with the Eurotour but it does seem strange to make a change like this during the season – why not wait until the end?
So culd the rule change be the downfall of Imran’s attempted Grand Slam? We will have to wait and see!
We are also changing our coverage slightly, in the past we have filmed pretty much constantly across the Saturday and Sunday and hve done up to 17 matches across a weekend. This is great for content and it is also great to feature a myriad of different players, the problem is when it comes to editing the matches. With all of the other events we are attending we are getting a massive backlog, and it is realistic at the moment for us only to manage 3-4 matches per week with everything else to do with running the channel as well.
So for the Northern Masters we are only filming on Saturday and will be concentrating on the Professional Cup. (Due to timings some Challenge matches will still get recorded) This will allow us time to do extended interviews with some of the top players and also to add a bit of feel and atmosphere to the programmes we create.
I know some are going to be disappointed but we have to do what is right for our viewers and also for the channel, we want to be about quality and not just quantity – I hope we can create something suitable.
