Snooker: Fulcher Ends Borg's Unbeaten Run

In a fine display of solid match snooker, Jonni Fulcher derailed the Borg Express finally ending his run of 25 straight wins in European Snooker. Borg had only three chances in the balls in the entire match, which he was unable to capitalize upon. Five chances in all were all that Fulcher needed to clintch the match with a very convincing 4-0 winning margin. He fired in breaks of 63, 64 and 69 striding his way to one of the best of his career wins.

This is Fulcher's first European Championships representing Switzerland, where he has lived for the past four years. Currently one of the top 10 ranked European Pool players he is showing that he's not constrained to the American disciplines and, with his roots in snooker, performances like this show that he's a force to be reckoned with on the European Snooker front.

Snooker: European Championships

This year the European Amature Snooker Championships are being held in Carlow, Republic of Ireland. The event got underway this Wednesday with a number of big names amateur and ex-professional names in the line up. Most notably Darren Morgen, Eugine Hughes playing in the Seniors. Alex Borg from Malta (Photo left - European champion for the last two years!), Bjorn Haneveer from Belgium, Yannick Poulin from France, Stefan Mazrocis from Holland, Michael White from Wales... The list goes on.

Snooker is spreading ever further and wider accross Europe, this year the list of countries taking part is as large as ever with players from 25 countries and 26 countries in all represented when including referees.
Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Jersey, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Wales.

The format for the men's tournament is 8 groups of 8 players playing round robin with the top 4 going through to the last 32 knockout stage. For the Masters it is 4 groups of 8 with top 4 going through to the last 16 knockout stage and for the girls 4 groups of 6 with top 2 going through to the last 8 knockout stage.

The main news for the tournament can be found here. Live scoring can be found here.

We wish everyone a great tournament and I look forward to posting more about the progress of the tournament and perhaps my own progress as the days unfold.

Snooker: Higgins Takes a Fantastic Final

Mark Selby pushed Higgins all the way in the 888.com World Snooker Championship Final. In a great match that swayed both ways over 2 days, Higgins finally managed to pull himself and his game together for the last four frames that took him to the title.

Higgins deserved the victory and Selby was a great runner-up. He made Higgins fight all the way and is now certainly a big name for the future.

Selby's display of cue power was awesome but he didn't quite manage to buzz the same way he did when he knocked in his 3 consecutive centuries earlier in the tournament. Selby was really looking to grind out the victory and I thought he might do it as Higgins, for me, looked the more tired of the two players.

Higgins said Selby put up and great fight and played great, he also said that when he played Selby two years ago, "he wasn't that good!" :-) a comment much appreciated by Selby who played the whole match in good spirits. But last year Selby beat Higgins and Higgins said he could see that Selby was a different class of player. Over these last 2 weeks, Selby's shown himself to be a different class again.

The last word has to go to Higgins, he's always been a class player who came onto the professional stage at the same time as O'Sullivan. He beat Ronnie to their first titles and look to move on quickly to becoming a dominant force in the game. For various reasons, probably only known to him, it didn't happen. He's a truly great player that I think hasn't achieved to his full potential over the last 10 years, but I'm really happy to see him back at the top where he belongs. I think he's got more World titles in him, and although I've lost money with him winning this year, I hope to see him winning a lot more titles in the future.

I may edit this article a little more tomorrow, but that's about it from this season's snooker on greenbaize, but add us to your news readers using the red XML or RSS links to the top right of this page and we'll be updating the site regularly with Cue Sports News! We'll keep you informed with the gossip and other non-ranking (as well as ranking) snooker events. Jonni will be blogging on the Eurotour and we will be posting interviews with players.

Snooker: Another Maximum

Not at the World Champs, but our other contributor Jonni knocks in another one before he heads off for his Eurotour event...

Snooker: Jonni Fulcher on YouTube

Check out some funky vids by our other contributor, Jonni Fulcher on YouTube!