Snooker: New Season Blasts Off Without Rocket!

The season is under way with the Shanghai Masters. Already there's a little bit of controversy with - guess who - yes, our friend Ronnie O'Sullivan. A statement on Ronnie's official website says that he has injured his back. This looks like a legitimate complaint so nobody's really in a position complain. Although I'm sure the paying public are not too pleased and my natural cynicism is throwing a few doubts my way!!! How many of you have got your doctor to write you a not-entirely-true doctors note and how many times as Ronnie stated publicly that it's pointless travelling all the way to China for a tournament?

The statement reads as follows:

"We regret to inform you that Ronnie has had to withdraw from The Shanghai Masters, this is due to a back injury sustained while training. He has been advised by his doctor not to travel as sitting on a plane for several hours and stretching over a snooker table will significantly delay his recovery and he feels that he wouldn't be able to give the tournament 100%. The injury occurred several days ago and although Ronnie hoped that he would recover in time to appear in Shanghai he informed us this afternoon that this is not the case and he is unable to attend."

Moving on to the snooker, Monday saw 8 wild card matches with 8 Chinese players competing against 8 of Europe's "regular names". There were 3 shocks with Yu De Lu defeating Mike Dunn, Xiao Guadong defeating Michael Judge and Yang Qintainn defeating Scott Mackenzie.

The first round included a few tricky matches with Higgins having to play Jamie Cope, Stephen Lee vs Marco Fu, and Dave Harold vs Ebdon. Unfortunately I'm not getting to see many of the matches due to work commitments. I saw some of the wild card matches on Eurosport yesterday evening but none of them (that I saw) were particularly spectacular.

Feel free to comment on this blog if you see any of the matches, ...I'll add a few more posts as the tournament progresses.

It's great to see the snooker under way again! :-)