Slow play in Snooker. When is it deliberate? What should be done?

Snooker is a Sport that already uses technology to help, and the referees don't do many things that can cause controversy. But you will always have talkings about slow play, and for me some players waste time deliberately trying to put their opponent off the match and it's really bad for the game, it damages the image of Snooker.

2014 World Champion Selby is one of the players that have been criticized for slow playing

But what should be made about it? There are a lot of conservative fans that think nothing must be made, but Snooker can't keep stuck in the past, it must go on with time. Although I don't want to see a change like a fast shot-clock that affect the quality of the players, some players need more time than others to make a shot. So considering the shot-clock isn't the fairer thing to do, for me it would be up to the referees to deny the deliberate slow play in Snooker, they know the natural time of every player and when they feel the player is wasting time on purpose, they could penalize him with 7 points for a technical foul after one warning or two. In fact the referees already have the power to do that, but as I said in Snooker the referees don't have to and don't want to influence the match with a decision he took by his opinion, and that would bring some controversy into the matches. But I would rather that than seeing people getting disinterested with Snooker because of slow playing.
But anyway are controversies bad for the game at all? I think the Welsh Open 2016 made it very clear, no! There was a lot of controversy on O`Sullivan turning down a 147 in the first day of the event and the result was Eurosport reaching their biggest audience in a decade for the rest of the event.

To see a Snooker player wasting time to put their opponent off is like seeing a footballer pretending an injury, that's unsportsmanlike and in football the referee can give him a yellow card, in Snooker there would be a penalty for acting like this too; I've been debating this subject on Facebook and Twitter for the last few days and the result is: Many people agree with with my suggestion to put it in the hands of the referees, but the majority ask for a Shot Clock.
2005 World Champion Shaun Murphy said during the Shoot-Out 2016 that Snooker needs a shot-clock and other players like Judd Trump and Ronnie O`Sullivan agree with him.
Well, I think a shot-clock is an alternative, but only if it is something that don't damage the standard of the game, just enough to stop getting players deliberately wasting time during the matches. Something like 65 seconds during normal shots, reduced to 30 seconds once a ball is potted and the player is on a break, and 110 seconds when the player is snookered reduced to 60 seconds after the first attempt. Let the players have the right to stop the clock for two or three shots during the frame and I think everybody on the Tour would cope with that, and the talks about slow play would be dead.

World Snooker have made something trying to speed the matches up, they limited the number of times the players can go to the toilet during a match, but I can't agree with this decision because the players drink a big amount of water during the frames and most of the times they come back from the toilet before the the referee set the table or before the TV come back from the adverts. And even if they didn't 30 seconds less between frames don't make any difference to be honest.
Obviously I don't know the opinion of all the players about it, but the reaction from the players on Twitter was very opposite to this decision.


This is something we could sit and debate for hours and hours, and that's why I've been colecting some opinions during the past few days before posting it, and here's what the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) chairman Jason Ferguson had to say about it:
"We are assessing shot times across the tour with our scoring partners, as you know we can accurately time each shot through the scoring system. I would like to look at the possibility of a warning system. Referees already have the power to deal with slow play if it is being done to slow the match down, however to create a consistent warning system we need to consider the data. A very interesting subject and no easy answers!"

As you can see Mr. Ferguson agree with me on giving the referees the responsibilities, but as he said we've got no "easy answers" for this subject and to be honest I think the standard of the referees have to improve for it to be made.
With at least 127 matches played in every tournament now and with Snooker having tournaments all around the World (what's very good by the way), World Snooker needs more referees, and it's natural that when the demand grows it's easier to get in. So the quality of the referees have dropped and it's not me saying that, it's normal to see players moaning about referees now and it didn't happen in the past when World Snooker needed less referees.


What do you think about it? If you have a good suggestion let me know and I might display it here on the Blog.



With Shot-Clock or not, Snooker remains to be played and the Winners Group of the Championship League is underway, one of Ronnie O`Sullivan, Judd Trump, Stephen Maguire, Mark Williams, Mark Selby or Matthew Selt will be crowned the Champion on Thursday (3rd March). And later the World Grand Prix (From Tuesday 8th to Sunday 13th March) will bring the best 32 players of the 2015/16 season together battling for the title. Don't forget that this year the World Grand Prix will be a Ranking Event for the first time.
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