It is rather hard to believe, but today marks the fifth birthday of this humble snooker blog, which I started back in August 2008.
Five years, nearly 3,932 posts, 383 pages, the odd technical glitch and an unspeakable amount of rankings updates since however, the blog is still going strong and with the same aim as ever, to help publicise the brilliant sport of snooker.
Click below for an unashamedly self-indulgent look back at the last five years and thanks to those who have helped me along the way…
I am often asked why I decided to set up a snooker blog in the first place and there were a few reasons for it. One was that I had a couple of friends who were currently in the early days of setting up their own football related blogs and doing well, while another was my personal circumstances at the time, which meant that I had a lot of spare time on my hands.
As silly as it may sound however, the actual trigger for me to start the blog was this article at SkySports and the various incorrect spellings of players names within it. Rightly or wrongly, I thought that I would be able to do better and so PSB was born!
As the years have progressed, the snooker landscape has changed dramatically, most obviously with the sheer volume of snooker that we now have on the calendar. Back in 2008, there were no PTC events, just two ranking events in China and the idea of a full-ranking event in Germany, something that the local fans had already been crying out for, was not to come to fruition for another two and a half years.
The first tournament that I covered on the site was the invitational Belgian Open, followed swiftly by the Shanghai Masters, both of which were won by Ricky Walden. It is quite fitting in a way then that Ricky was able to capture his first European Tour event title last week in Doncaster.
The other key difference is that back in 2008, there were only really two snooker websites of note. For all of the inside track, the place to go was the excellent Snooker Scene Blog by David Hendon, while the ‘go to’ website for scores and results was the Global Snooker Centre, which was tirelessly updated by Janie Watkins.
Old PSB!
Since then, many other websites and blogs have come and (in many cases) gone, while the advent of Twitter and social media during the past couple of years has also had a fundamental impact on the way that snooker fans can access the latest news. The fact that fans can these days interact with the game’s leading players online has in particular made a huge difference to how accessible the sport is to those on the outside.
When I first started the blog, I had never considered that one day it would be read by the very snooker players that I had grown up watching on television and chasing round for autographs in my youth.
To my surprise however, it was not long before a few snooker personalities began to show an interest in the blog, Barry Pinches and Brendan Moore being among the first. Following the advent of rolling rankings back in 2010, as well as the increased popularity of Twitter a year later however, I have been fortunate to meet and in some cases interview a number of professional players, past and present.
Combined with the incredible access that I have been given by World Snooker, the opportunities that I personally have been afforded as a result of my ramblings on this snooker blog have far exceeded any expectations that I might have had.
I would like to thank all of the many people who have helped me along the way, from those who first spotted and linked to the blog at the very beginning, such as CueSportTV, Nottingham Snooker, Maximum Break and Sina Snooker, to the countless others that have helped me since.
From the players who have supported the blog by reading and providing interviews, as well as the media, referees, fellow bloggers and most important the readers, I am very grateful and hope that together we can all offer something to help the sport continue to prosper. I am sure that you will all know who you are, so I will refrain from listing individuals to avoid inevitably forgetting someone!
As ever, I am always open to suggestions and you can readily contact me by email or Twitter, while one day I would like to restore comments to the blog, though I have been hoping for that for some time.
No doubt with the advent of the change to a prize money based ranking list next year, there will be the usual degree of chaos and confusion that we see when there is such a change in snooker, so hopefully I will be able to clear some of that up and explain the key implications as best as possible.
Here is to the next five years, which hopefully you will continue to follow with Pro Snooker Blog. Where will snooker be come 2018?