Snooker loopy and football mad

ON the train from Edinburgh to Sheffield, I was feeling the kind of excitement usually associated with young children on the day of a long-awaited excursion to a theme park or school tour.
This same excitement had temporarily kept me from sleeping the night before but not so much that exhaustion did anything to blunt my mood. I was setting off for a wild weekend of sitting quietly in a darkened room. Upon my arrival in the former steel capital of Britain, a steady rain fell from the dark sky and all the clichés I had heard about grim Northern English cities seemed apt. Upon further inspection of the city centre, these would be utterly dispelled thanks to the council’s excellent work in regenerating the centre of Sheffield and the installation of a magnificent tram system and free bus service to serve the local population. Along with a friend from London, I found my hotel and settled in for the night because we had an early start the next morning.
Up bright and early, Ted and I walked through the city centre and after 10 minutes reached our destination; the Crucible Theatre, the world famous home of snooker where our tickets would gain us access to the semi-final of the World Snooker Championships. The atmosphere inside the theatre was electric with devoted fans of the sports milling about and chatting intently about possible outcomes and some of the action they had seen over the previous two weeks. Since I announced my intention to travel to this year’s event, many friends have been sniggering about “snooker fans” and seem to be of the opinion that somehow we are a strange bunch, mostly male, lonely and overweight was the general consensus but here before me was a mix of people which seemed to tick every demographic box with the utmost ease.
Having been an avid watcher of snooker on television for many years, I was utterly unprepared for the intensity of the live experience. Firstly, there is the proximity of the audience to the players. They are so close that the slightest noise from the crowd can unsettle them. They have the heightened senses of a hunted animal and spook easily so total silence is required when they line up a shot. This proximity, combined with the utter concentration of the players and the strictly enforced code of conduct creates a tension that is difficult to bear at times.
The solitary nature of the sport puts the players under such pressure that every shot can seem as though it is life and death and of course, this increases exponentially as the tournament progresses. Watching at home, I have often had to leave the room or pace anxiously when high-pressure shots are being taken but this option is not available in the Crucible, all you can do is sit and watch just as a player must when he has fluffed a shot.
Having watched the masters perform to an incredible standard, Ted and I retired to a snooker club where we spent many hours, along with other fans, trying to emulate the astounding skill and mental strength we had witnessed  from the players during that day’s session. 
This trend continued happily until the Sunday morning of our trip when we came downstairs for our breakfast only to find the hotel restaurant securely locked. Having sought clarification on the matter from a member of staff, we were informed that a soccer match, which would end in relegation for one team, was taking place in the city and that trouble was expected. The hotel would reopen once the fans had left the city. As we walked into the city centre, we entered a police state. Hordes of uniformed officers patrolled on foot, horseback and in a cavalcade of riot vans. Two of these riot vans followed a tram, which was full to bursting point with howling gesturing soccer fans. The streets were extremely tense and many premises remained closed.
Our shock at this level of unease on the street was nothing, however, when compared to what we felt upon entering the Crucible. There was a subdued atmosphere in the place which was nothing like what had been there the previous two days. Soon we discovered that a tabloid newspaper had published allegations on its front page relating to John Higgins, the world number one, who had been immediately suspended pending an investigation. Timed to coincide with the final, the release of a video by the paper seemed to implicate Higgins in a match-fixing scandal. He issued a statement stating his innocence and saying his conscience is “100% clear” but the whole sorry business cast a dark shadow over what should have been for two other players the greatest day of their lives. The timing of the story’s release was a targeted attack on the sport and now snooker was in the news for all the wrong reasons. It is usually difficult to find snooker reports in the sports pages and now it was splashed all over the front pages.
Anyone who has ever attempted to pot a ball on a snooker table will know the level of skill that participants in this competition show every time they play the game. The mental toughness it takes to be a top-class snooker player is practically unequalled in the sporting world. With the game suffering hard times in recent years and now a massive scandal to deal with, many at the Crucible were pessimistic as to the future. All we can do is hope that this amazing sport along with its magnificent players can ride out these troubled times and continue to bring the entertainment and sporting heroics with which snooker has been so rightly associated for many years.