On the 20th and 21st April I was invited to be the lead coach at the 2013 World Snooker Cue Zone on the opening two days in the Crucible in Sheffield. The Cue Zones area showcase for the general public during their stay at major championships which is also used as a filming area by BBC TV. The WPBSA is responsible for delivering Cue Zones at TV events with its objective to promote the World Snooker Coaching Programme and to enhance the quality of delivery by its coaches as it will be a shop window for the top coaches to promote themselves.
The atmosphere around the Cue Zone and the Crucible was electric all weekend and it was an honour to be invited back again by World Snooker to lead the Cue Zone last weekend. I really liked meeting the WPBSA team again and their motto of growing the game is truly working with the amount of players at the Cue Zone this weekend. It seemed that people from all around the world travelled to Sheffield at the weekend to see the return of the rocket Ronnie O Sullivan in his first round win against Marcus Campbell and to see young Michael White become the real star of the game in his fantastic win over Mark Williams.
The public practiced some of my training routines and were awarded WPBSA medals and certificates to all who cleared the routine. Some routines were against the clock in speed snooker and some were about the amount of balls potted. There were some Irish winners this year in the Cue Zone with Stephen Walsh from Carrick, Ray Power and Tom O Driscoll from Waterford all winning gold medals in clearing the routines with some brilliant potting displays. Steve Davis, Jason Ferguson, Ray Curtis, Reg Davies, Steve Mallender, Darren Presgrave and Chris Lovell were also on hand to make this 2013 Cue Zone the biggest and best ever World Snooker Cue Zone.
One of the star International players who attended this weekend’s Cue Zone was Tatjana Vasiljeva who is the 2012 EBSA European Ladies Snooker Champion. Tatjana earlier this year became herself a World Snooker Coach and she cleared routine on the table and was awarded a gold medal and certificate.
