Imagine the scene; The World 8-ball Championship Final. In front of a packed crowd of thousands, Mick Hill and Rob Chilton are introduced by a Michael Buffer-esque MC (Rob Walker, please take note) to a selection of former Champions, assorted lesser Royals, and a rapt TV audience of millions from across the globe, before playing a tense, back and forth battle for the sport’s biggest prize, which carries with it a trophy the size of San Marino and a cheque which dwarfs even that. The players are household names, middle-aged women gossip over how much they’d like to let Ronan McCarthy leave his shoes under their bed and their guilty desire to mother that adorable little Gareth Potts… Kids in school throw names like Darren Appleton and Carl Morris in with greats from other sports like Ilie Nastase and Diego Maradona… These guys can barely walk down the street without being accosted by ever more clingy fans, and their popularity is such that statues are erected in their respective locales…

Alright, I’ve pushed the image too far. But…

Compare the first part of that paragraph with other sports around the globe. Even better, substitute the name of the sport with tennis, and replace the participants with Mssrs Federer and Murray. How about golf instead, and the names Woods (only the men cheer now, don’t they Tiger?) and Mickelson? Boxing: Pacquiao and Mayweather.

I think this point has been made sufficiently well; like the All American Rejects, I’ll move along….

There is a disturbing lack of a certain something in the 8-ball fraternity. I have been watching a lot of other sports recently, being a slightly disenchanted observer of anything that involves hitting balls around on a table with a stick in recent times. It has occurred that in other sports, there is an inbuilt respect, bordering on reverence, for the greats of the game. In fact, that may even be an incorrect summary, considering the reception that two unseeded players got from the crowd a few days ago in the Australian Open. There is, in fact, a genuine affection for anyone who contributes toward making the sport what it is, whether they are the absolute elite or the number 76, doomed to lose early in a display of varying degrees of talent, heart and emotion that ultimately will prove insufficient. “You can’t win,” seems to be the sentiment, “but we really appreciate your turning up and giving it your best anyway.”

Similar can be said about lower ranking golfers, who, while not attracting the acclaim or even the attention of the larger parts of the attending crowd, still get a hearty round of applause from those who see their efforts toward genuine contention and appreciate their contribution toward the sport as a whole. I cannot even begin to guess how many articles I have read about journeymen boxers, almost always painted in a slightly melancholy way, the authors quite clearly encouraging some sort of empathy for their plight (and a plight it is for a man with a record of 8-108-22, who has essentially made a career out of getting punched in the face by far more gifted foes).

Compare and contrast this with the general consensus opinion held by those who felt it necessary to comment on the recent money match between 3-time World Champion Gareth Potts and former European Champion Oly Bale. Those who expressed respect for Oly’s pluck and bottle in making this match happen were gunned down like Battle of the Somme squaddies by those who wanted to take the opportunity to deride his efforts. Woe betide any man who dare take on a decent player and get beaten in future; the CueClubInternational thread pertaining to the match not only reveals your potential reception, but also the sort of character assassination that has now become part and parcel of the game for anyone willing to put their head over the parapet. (Insert your own ‘sniper’ gag here…)

So why is there this apathy toward the better exponents of a game we all involve ourselves with, participate in, and contribute toward? I have a theory, and it isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but I’ll feel better when it’s expressed.

How many times have we all heard English 8-ball described as a ‘pub game’? I’ll choose to ignore the slightly deprecating term ‘game’, since most who play the game would rather it was referred to as a ‘sport’, but it is a distinction worth noting, nonetheless. The delineation of the game in this manner tends to imply, quite apart from the ‘seedy’ images of dark, smoke filled rooms and old soaks leaving their sticky, hand-warmed 50p on the table, a distinct lack of elitism. I’ve seen Carl Morris (the 1998 World 8-ball Champion) playing in a local league match, the guys around him barely able to discern which end of the stick they’re supposed to hit the little white ball with in between sips of their IPA (quite a fitting drink reference, given the subject matter at hand….), but still able to call him their team-mate/opponent. They get the chance to tell their mates how they ‘beat’ a former World Champion (since the proletariat I refer to has no concept of what ‘beating’ someone really means), or were the first one to pat him on the shoulder when he won the deciding frame against the Kings Head ‘B’ team. Thus, a cat can indeed look at a king.

I know next to nothing about golf. I have said on numerous occasions that I watch it on TV if Woods is playing, simply because I love to watch someone make something so difficult look so embarrassingly easy. Beyond that, I have very little idea about the sport as a whole. I’d be willing to bet, however, that if I turn up at my local golf club, I won’t be able to simply borrow some the club’s clubs (some tentative use of an apostrophe there, lest I err!!) and play a couple of rounds with a player ranked in the top ten in the world. Likewise, my chances of ever hitting some balls around with Roger Federer are slimmer than the current incarnation of Amy Winehouse.

Since 8-ball pool has such a localized elite, there is less of a mystique about the very top players. All who are well known are also personally known by almost everyone in the game, to a greater or lesser extent. I appreciate that not everyone that says they know the top few players is also known personally by the players they “Add as a Friend” on Facebook, but they do have the opportunity of having a beer within 5 yards of Mick Hill in Great Yarmouth, or stopping Phil Harrison on his way through a crowded pool club in the arse-end of nowhere to congratulate him on his World Championship win. The names and faces will flicker and die in a time normally associated with the duration of Ali Dia’s Premier League football career, but club hackers still have the chance to rub shoulders with giants, with all the self-satisfaction this brings.

Another result of this congenial atmosphere is that those who more deeply immerse themselves in the company of the players, the politics that surround the sport and the more serious tournaments at the top end of the game become over-familiar, with the players, with the game, with everything. Gone is the mesmerising effect of Great Yarmouth, the awe that watching your first ever IPA Tour Final brings, the respect and reverence that is reserved for those we only see from a distance, or on Sky Sports. Seeing the human side of the players, hearing them speak, being in their company for any prolonged period brings with it a sense of desensitisation, the absolute absence of shock that is generated by watching the fifth Saw film after watching the other four first.

Filling the void left by the nice warm cuddly feelings that were part and parcel of the early pool experience is a more bitter emotion. Unlike in more mainstream sports (football not included, as some of the bile and filth that fans exhibit toward the players, clubs  and each other is simply unjustifiable), there is no affection for the players, no sense of goodwill. In such a close-knit community cliques will inevitably arise, and people will start to see each other as friends/enemies rather than fellow contributors to the same goal, but the sentiments expressed on a whim by those who get closer to the players than tennis fans ever could to Federer (by which I mean on a personal level), and by the players themselves about each other, can only be a bad thing for the sport as a whole in the long term. If, as seems the case, familiarity breeds contempt, maybe we should all keep our distance a little more.

Rich Wharton – Feb 2010