John Higgins live from Glasgow

[ferret]

When I write a interview for a Snooker player I always try to ask questions that are going to provide interesting and responsive answers from the player, with some players you almost have to lead the question to provide a thoughtful response and not a simple yes or no, alot of the time some of my questions go unanswered as the players do not want to seem to be painting the sport or powers at be in a bad light.

3 times World Champion and beneficiary of a MBE this year John Higgins needs no leading at all to provide a honest and thought out response, John is currently defending his title in Glasgow this week for the un-sponsored Grand Prix at The Kalvin Hall.

I started my interview with John asking about the SPA or Snooker Players Association which he is linked to with him manager Pat Mooney, on the 10th of September Pat wrote to The WPBSA asking for a meeting to discuss what The SPA was intending to do for the game (Link to letter), on the 18th of September The WPBSA secretary Elain Eayers wrote back to Pat with a very defensive and almost hostile response (Link to Letter).

I asked John about the letter responding to Pat's letter.

John Higgins SPA Letter response

There are a few players out there still not signed up because they are still not too sure exactly what the aims of The SPA are, one of these is Ricky Walden who I spoke with last week, I asked John what the main aims of The SPA are.

John Higgins SPA goals

As most of you will know John is one of the leading forces behind The World Series of Snooker which will be in Prague later this month, The WSS are doing some seemingly small steps to promote the events which could prove to produce huge results! what are these steps I hear you ask well it is very simple really a press pack. All press who attend a WSS event will all receive POS, player information and high resolution images of the players from the events, if this is provided through physical media or downloadable content has still not been decided.

So what does this mean for the media? well for people like me it means I do not actually need to attend a WSS event to be able to give you the reader full coverage of the event, I can give you pictures from the games, statistics and articles all provided by The WSS, the only thing I can think of that would put the icing on the cake would be MP3 recordings of the press conferences. So will this in turn put me out of a job? well no because you will always get press going to the events and for me it has infact given me more work as I have been asked to goto the events and take the mentioned photographs. So the more "Free press" available the more coverage the events should get in local and national press because to the news agencies it is a zero cost source of information.

John, defending his title this season has played his first round match against Mark Joyce winning 5-1

John Higgins on his 1st round win

I asked john about the conditions of the tables in Glasgow's Kalvin Hall as there has been mentions that the tables are not playing the best.

John Higgins on table conditions

I asked john about the random draw coming up later today (Tuesday)

John Higgins on the random draw

I wanted to know what John would of done as a career if he had not been a Snooker player.

John Higgins on alternate career

I continued form the above question to ask about if he had made a plans for the future if his snooker career was to take a fall.

John Higgins on future plans

Adr147 wanted to ask why John's Snooker Cue has the chevrons the opposite way round form everybody else.

John Higgins on his cue

We will be catching up with John again later this week so if you have any questions for him then please make a comment to this article or send me a private message and for those questions that were not in this article or were not asked do not worry they will be in the next installment, before I sign off here is a little quote form John about TSF

John Higgins on TSF

So there you have it, The 3 times World Snooker Champion says that we have a good site so we must be doing something right

[bongo]

Hi ferret, great interview, thanks. I do like the way you can listen to John, probably better then just reading it.

[Migtsf]

I for one would prefer to have read the interview instead. The Scottish accent is a big barrier for us non-Brits. In that last quote about TSF, I could only understand one word: ‘site’ (I think).

[Iszkiri]

I'm in the same shoes. I would love to know John's answers, but for me it's almost a "Mission Impossible" to understand, and in this case it was much more harder because of the noisy channel.
I wish somebody could type it down...

[RocketRoy1983]

Well I understood and loved it nice one Kevin. He said "I pop on every now and then its definatly a good site" or words to that effect

[ace man]

Thanks Roy!
My favourite player, but my word I really have to concentrate 100% and possibly more to understand anything. I've always had highest grades in English classes, from elementary school to university, but...to no avail I guess...

[Monique]

I'm struggling also, really struggling. It's partly related to a bad hearing but it is also definitely related to his skoatish accent! There are other players who tend to speak to their collars or are much more softspoken and I still manage better than with John. Now he isn't the worse of the lot ... anything Burnett says is a complete mystery to me. Sometimes I wonder if he really speaks english

[darrus]

Well, I think I've managed to get most of what he said (or maybe I'm deluding myself? ). But I too would have preferred to read his answers. His accent is really something, and especially on the non-studio quality recording
Great intervew anyway, thanks, ferret!

[RGCirencester]

John Higgins Interview Text Format

I was attempting to transcribe some of this interview while waiting for the highlights to start for people having problems with Johns accent, however I am actually finding it quite hard as well, so how the foreign members are coping I don't know.

I have finished all the sections now however the first SPA section I was having quite a hard time with the recording so sorry if it doesn't make sense lol!

John in Blue and Kev in red.

When I write a interview for a Snooker player I always try to ask questions that are going to provide interesting and responsive answers from the player, with some players you almost have to lead the question to provide a thoughtful response and not a simple yes or no, alot of the time some of my questions go unanswered as the players do not want to seem to be painting the sport or powers at be in a bad light.

3 times World Champion and beneficiary of a MBE this year John Higgins needs no leading at all to provide a honest and thought out response, John is currently defending his title in Glasgow this week for the un-sponsored Grand Prix at The Kalvin Hall.

I started my interview with John asking about the SPA or Snooker Players Association which he is linked to with him manager Pat Mooney, on the 10th of September Pat wrote to The WPBSA asking for a meeting to discuss what The SPA was intending to do for the game (Link to letter), on the 18th of September The WPBSA secretary Elain Eayers wrote back to Pat with a very defensive and almost hostile response (Link to Letter).

I asked John about the letter responding to Pat's letter.

That was to be expected. The whole, err, I think the points are basically, what your actually saying to yourself is, I'm speaking from my own personal experience, where I could be playing in the masters, and the match up league, and maybe the championship snooker at (somewhere ) and maybe possibly a couple of world series events. Now I still will haev maybe quite a few tournaments to play in, but their point is to the rest of the members, like the players as if to say they played in two tournaments, they might have been knocked out of two tournaments, and they've got 4 tournaments now left in the rest of the season, and they have to do that. Well look, that is it, because basically we have given every, we have helped world snooker in every way shape or form posible, qnd we've still only got 6 tournaments. So basically we want to try and open up and see if their is interest globally for other tournaments around the world, that obviously we can then grant them ranking status as well. Because we dont know what indication these countries have of running events, because world snooker dont tell us if they are having bites here or bites there or bites anywhere, ebcause they have got no right to tell us. So we dont know if there is any chance of other tournaments coming along, and this is why we've got teh 4 we started with. Consequentl;y if you talk to other perople, every other sport has got their own professional players association. We are like the only sport that doesnt have one.

There are a few players out there still not signed up because they are still not too sure exactly what the aims of The SPA are, one of these is Ricky Walden who I spoke with last week, I asked John what the main aims of The SPA are.

When you sit down to speak to people, like some players think its a takeover, but its not a takeover, we just want to sit down and we want more say in how somethings run. We dont want the ultimate say in how its run, we just want some say in how the sport is run. I mean right now its really struggling in britain attendance wise. And you can see again in Glasgow. Theres a club i play in, and I know other club owners up in scotland. And if they throw in say couple hundred tickets in each club in Glasgow. Cuz you know attendance is not gunna be great, throw them out there, throw them to the members, throw them to the clubs, just say theres free tickets come along, but they dont want to do that so thats why.

As most of you will know John is one of the leading forces behind The World Series of Snooker which will be in Prague later this month, The WSS are doing some seemingly small steps to promote the events which could prove to produce huge results! what are these steps I hear you ask well it is very simple really a press pack. All press who attend a WSS event will all receive POS, player information and high resolution images of the players from the events, if this is provided through physical media or downloadable content has still not been decided.

So what does this mean for the media? well for people like me it means I do not actually need to attend a WSS event to be able to give you the reader full coverage of the event, I can give you pictures from the games, statistics and articles all provided by The WSS, the only thing I can think of that would put the icing on the cake would be MP3 recordings of the press conferences. So will this in turn put me out of a job? well no because you will always get press going to the events and for me it has infact given me more work as I have been asked to goto the events and take the mentioned photographs. So the more "Free press" available the more coverage the events should get in local and national press because to the news agencies it is a zero cost source of information.


John, defending his title this season has played his first round match against Mark Joyce winning 5-1

Yeh well, it's always gunna be tough for a young player to come in and play on TV but, really maybe thats only the odd exception coming through, where the youngsters that have not really played on TV before they come in and they take to it like a duck to water. Something maybe like a Judd Trump or something, just now hes struggling to actually get on the TV cameras. Obviously the match up league's helped him but he's lost his two qualifying matches so, hes the time that I think he plays better snooker on the TV cameras. Whereas most of the players are playing their better stuff on the TV cameras and don't seem to bring it to the main match.

I asked john about the conditions of the tables in Glasgow's Kalvin Hall as there has been mentions that the tables are not playing the best.

A little bit slow
They are a bit slow right
They're still quite reactive but I've watched a couple of games as well and it looks as if they are playing slower so I don't know if its maybe the air or something but they are definitely playing a little bit slower.
Have you played on the practice tables at the venue yet?
Yeh they were the same they were quite slow as well so, err, I don't know if mayube they'll have to change them or something to actually get a bit better but they're quite sloww.
They were saying yesterday on the BBC that the middle pockets seemed really tight.
Yeh that's the difference with these star tables, the pockets on these tables are a lot tighter than they were on the Rileys. You've got to be so much more precise, and, err, they are a lot tougher. I think ones along the cushions like in the baulk pockets they still might be roughly the same. Yeh But the middle pockets they play like the old BZ's used to. maybe 15, 20 years ago the old westbury tables.
Oh right
There pockets were a little bit tighter. And I think star have gone back to that as well.

I asked john about the random draw coming up later today (Tuesday)

Yeh I love it, its one of these things, as you say it just adds a bit of publicity to it. Being a professional I know basically the way the ranking work, and you know roughly who your going to play in every tournament. And it's become so boring. And I would love to get back to this FA club style draw. I would love to play in a doubles event, I love playing in the team events, I think somethig like that could add a bit to the calendar. The way they've got it at the moment its just stagnating and its quite repetetive year in year out. I would love to play in different events, because that would get the juices floqwing again. Playing in a team event, a doubles event, I would love somethign like that to come up.

I wanted to know what John would of done as a career if he had not been a Snooker player.

I quite liked accounting at school, quite liked to work with numbers and things like that. I don't know, I was good with numbers because obviously I played snooker at an early age and you do a lot of counting what with the scores, so I was quite good with numbers. So I think maybe an accountant or maybe a bookie because good with numbers.

I continued form the above question to ask about if he had made a plans for the future if his snooker career was to take a fall.

Well it's something you maybe have to look as because you know you can't play snooker forever. you dont know how long youll be at the top you have to earn money for your family. You dont know what the futures going to hold for you, you've got to live each day as it comes. Theres no point living too far in the future because you don't know whats going to come in the furutre. So I'm just going to live each day as it comes.

Adr147 wanted to ask why John's Snooker Cue has the chevrons the opposite way round form everybody else.

Right its cuz ive always had a cue like that from the very first cue i picked up when i was about 9 or 10 it was always like that. I just like the way the chevrons come back to you instead of going towards the ball. And ever since then ive always tried to pick cues out with the same kind of chevrons. It's funny because a lot of players ask me that. Because most players have the chevrons going to the ball and I'm the opposite. I just tell themI've always grew up with the chevrons going that way.
OK, and how long have you had your current cue for?
I've had it for about, i think its about 2 years now. Yeh 2 years.
We talk on the snooker forum all the time about who makes the best cue, who has the best cue, but do you really think it makes a huge difference whether you have a john parris or a rileys cue?
I think there are some good cuemakers out there. I think its the same old story. I think the cuemaker, if hes making cues for a top top player; I think he puts a little more effort into it than if he was doign it for any run of the mill player. Speaking form experience Kevin Muncaster, I asked hi mto make me a cue, he made about 4 or 5, really really nice cues. He picked like the best pieces of wood and he did them all to the same specifications. But there was one he said stood out, that was the nicer piece of wood and thatts the cue im using just now. I think thatts just maybe the little perks the top players will get. The cuemaker making one for the top players will spend that little extra time which could make the difference.

We will be catching up with John again later this week so if you have any questions for him then please make a comment to this article or send me a private message and for those questions that were not in this article or were not asked do not worry they will be in the next installment, before I sign off here is a little quote form John about TSF

Aye, no cuz I pop on there every now and then. Its a good site it definately is.

So there you have it, The 3 times World Snooker Champion says that we have a good site so we must be doing something right

[darrus]

Thank you, RGCirencester!

[RGCirencester]

Have done all bar the Spa sections now. See post 9 (LINK) if you would like the interview in text form.

Sorry about the spelling...

[RGCirencester]

All bar the first clip done now. But the Higgins robertson final frame is starting on highlights so I am goign to stop again.

Hope I helped someone out there and wasn't wasting my time =.=

[mushka]

I'm sure lot of people will appreciate it, RG.

Me including as I've given up after failing to understand even the TSF part.
Thank you.

[RGCirencester]

Even I'm having trouble understanding the SPA clip!!!!!

Ummmm this one might not be totally accurate word for word lol!

[RGCirencester]

I finally finished all the sections! Woot... The first SPA section was quite hard to understand though. But still I thuought it was a great interview and nice to hear from John. I personally liked listening to the clips but agree people might have problems with the accents.