New Zealand Snooker Championships

[legod]

The New Zealand Snooker Championships come to a conclusion tomorrow with the final being played in Auckland.

A live stream will be set up.

The final will also be filmed and posted online at a later date.

Start time for the final is 10am NZ time (11pm BST).

Waikato's Steve Robertson will play Auckland's Henry Killian.

[Neil Taperell]

What's the standard been like ?

Any good up and coming players' ?

[legod]

What's the standard been like ?

Any good up and coming players' ?

Highest break so far is 111 and that was made by Bayden Jackson, an expat former England Pool representative and the defending 2011 champion.
A few 90 breaks. Approximately 50 breaks over 40 spread over almost 150 matches.
There are a few up and coming players. Not many yet but that's changing (we hope) with a new national coaching structure.

[Neil Taperell]

Cheers for the reply .

Do you think that there is anyone capable of going onto the Main Tour ?

Always seems unfair due to the further a field Countries , of actually making it as a Pro .

You would have to base yourself in the UK and have a large amount of sponsorship .

[legod]

Cheers for the reply .

Do you think that there is anyone capable of going onto the Main Tour ?

Always seems unfair due to the further a field Countries , of actually making it as a Pro .

You would have to base yourself in the UK and have a large amount of sponsorship .

The last NZ player to join the main tour was Chris McBreen about 3 or 4 years ago. Other than that, NZ hasn't had any world class players since Dene O'Kane.
With the new coaching initiatives that have been introduced (we've had a couple of coaches attend the World Snooker coaching course in Sheffield), we hope that will change but I wouldn't expect to see any talent out of NZ to hit the World scene for maybe a decade.
Most of the current crop of players here who play competitively are well over 40 or 50.
Snooker doesn't get the same coverage here that it does overseas. And we hardly have any dedicated snooker halls. Instead you will see tables based in RSAs or Workingmen's clubs, which don't cater for unsupervised youngsters.
Growing the sport here is a challenge due to lack of funding. The days of big money tournaments that were common in the 80s are long gone.
But...I think there's plenty of reason to be optimistic. We have enthusiastic people keen to look after snooker over here and boys (and girls) are picking up cues again. Watch this space
It'd be great to get some of the old pros over to do some exhibitions. Eddie Charlton always used to be a favourite here and I believe the likes of Willie Thorne and Alex Higgins used to make trips here years ago. NZ had a ranking tournament back in 1990 (the New Zealand Masters)?

[Neil Taperell]

Sounds like it's going in the right direction .

Saw Dene at the World Seniors Tournament . Was a decent player in his prime .

[Terry Davidson]

I did my IBSF Examiner training with a fellow from NZ, Gary ?? (can't remember the last name now) and I know Nic Barrow went to NZ and trained a bunch of Master Coaches and Gary would be able to certify Master Coaches also. This was a few years back.

The IBSF training is now recognized by the WPBSA and we are allowed to certify WPBSA coaches but at a level higher than that given in the basic WPBSA coach training done by Steve Davis and Terry Griffiths in Britain.

We have the same problem, only worse in Canada as most young players gravitate towards pool since there are large tournaments closer to hand in both Canada and the USA. However, we do have a player on the tour this year, Floyd Zeigler, who was the Canadian Champ in 2007 and 2010. We would normally have multiple century breaks during the championship which was won this year by Alex Pagulayan and he also had the high break of 134 I believe it was.

Terry

[legod]

NZ SNOOKER FINAL LIVE STREAMING NOW! START at 10am second session at 1:30pm NZ time:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nzsnooker

[legod]

First 4 frames are up in 720p. More to follow. It should play as a 'playlist'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GhYX...5A8015D96EF5B0

[Mr Snooker]

Did Dene O' Kane enter the event and will the winner get a main tour place for the 2013/2014 snooker season

[legod]

Nope - no Dene O'Kane. Occasionally we see him turn up at a 'big money' invitational or some of the World Qualifying Events. I'm not sure if he's even playing at all anymore. He lives a fairly quiet life on Waiheke Island near Auckland.

The winner of the event qualifies to play in the IBSF World Champs in Egypt later this year.

The only way anyone from this part of the world can get on the Main Tour, is to win the Oceania Championships (I think that's still the case, unless the rules have been changed).