There isn’t a query snooker as a complete faces completely different challenges than within the peak of its recognition within the UK within the Eighties and 90s.
Entry to different sports activities has improved, there are extra leisure actions like gaming out there to younger folks, and there are fewer snooker halls throughout the nation.
These are challenges these working within the sport are keenly conscious of, although not fatalistic about.
“It is positively not a dying sport; it is simply completely different,” insists Anne Totten of Scottish Snooker.
Totten – whose son Chris misplaced within the World Championship qualifiers this 12 months – volunteers with the governing physique working to develop the game.
She factors to the lack of cigarette sponsors and the Covid pandemic as elements in how issues have modified, with the closure of golf equipment throughout lockdown hitting onerous.
Rising prices and the dearth of core funding can also be taking its toll.
“A couple of years in the past, our academies had been performing rather well,” she stated. “Our numbers had elevated immensely, it was rising and on the up, however then Covid [hit].”
“It was one of many worst-hit sports activities due to licensing and authorities reopening instances after lockdown, so actually it was 18 months misplaced and the place younger folks discovered different issues.”
Regardless of that, Totten insists snooker is Scotland is recovering and is extra inclusive than ever.
There’s a new tour for the over-55s, one other for girls, and gamers on completely different excursions from “very various backgrounds”.
Roughly 40 or 50 children are attending junior academies in Scotland, with between 10 and 20 younger gamers taking part in on excursions from beneath 14s to beneath 21s, and a few competing throughout age teams.
Snooker, although, is pushing to turn into a extra international sport and China, with a inhabitants of round 1.4 billion, is on the forefront of the sport with six gamers making it to the final 16 of this 12 months’s World Championship in Sheffield.
So whereas Totten believes there may be expertise in Scotland, the extent of competitors makes it more and more onerous to interrupt by way of on the world stage.
“I feel generally it is ignored that there’s a variety of younger folks coming by way of in what is admittedly, actually fierce competitors,” Totten stated, citing the likes of Dean Younger, Liam Graham, Ross Muir and Scott Donaldson.
“Circumstances are extremely troublesome for younger folks. Though the alternatives are there, these alternatives are there throughout the globe and everybody’s competing for a small variety of areas.”
It stays to be seen whether or not any of these areas on the skilled circuit can be taken by a younger Scot, or whether or not Higgins will proceed to be the usual bearer.
