Not long ago I posted here regarding the motion put forward by seven professional players to place the current board of the WPBSA up for vote with the intention of replacing them with Lee Doyle, Jim McMahon and Nigel Bond. Today however support for the requisition crumbled…
When news of this movement was revealed over at The Snooker Forum, the players listed as offering their support to it were:
Rather farcically however, the last couple of days have seen Ali Carter, Mike Dunn, Adrian Gunnell and Peter Ebdon ask for their names to be removed from the list. Mike Dunn has told The Snooker Forum:
“I want to move on and concentrate being a player as being on the previous board has held me back for seven year because of lack of practice I love the sport and want to be part of the new future”
Whilst Ali Carter has given his side of the story over at Snookerbacker’s excellent blog here, essentially saying that he wants to concentrate on being a snooker player rather than getting embroiled in snooker politics. Having seen how players such as Stephen Hendry and John Higgins have been caught up in it in the past, I do not blame either Ali or Mike for that.
So where does this leave the requisition? Will it still go ahead with possibly just Martin Gould, Nigel Bond and Mark King on board? What are the motives for the motion in the first place?
110sport’s Lee Doyle has told David Hendon over Snooker Scene Blog that although he was not behind the EGM, he was reacting to requests from the players and himself believes that the WPBSA board should be more independent from World Snooker Ltd and that various concerns raised by 110sport’s players have not been sufficiently addressed.
For those confused by the two bodies, the WPBSA are responsible for the running of the game itself whilst World Snooker Limited is operates the commercial side of the sport. Barry Hearn has himself stressed that it is important that the two bodies are to be independent of each other but and himself resigned as WPBSA chairman in order to ensure that this would be the case.
From the outside it would appear now as though the momentum behind the requisition has passed and that for now at least, hopefully the players will be able to concentrate on their game on the table. In the medium to long term however, knowing snooker I would not be surprised by anything!
In other news meanwhile, the venue for EPTC4 has been changed from Offenburg in Germany to the excellent Southwest Snooker Academy over in Gloucester. Reasons for the include a clash with the all-new Power Snooker event as well as poor ticket sales and the subsequent EPTC event in nearby Hamm. It is a shame that this has happened but I know that the Academy will prove to be a suitable alternative venue and understand that such problems are to be expected with so many new events appearing on the calendar this season.
On the subject of new events, Mark Selby has been blogging again over at his website, talking about the challenge of adapting to playing week-in, week-out as opposed to being almost a part-time player as in previous seasons.
Mark is in action right now in the Premier League against Ding Junhui which you can access on SkySports3 by hitting the red button.