After such an agonising defeat, Shaun Murphy was always likely to be in a foul mood. A disappointing performance in his first-round UK Championship match against amateur Si Jiahui saw the 39-year-old trailing 5-1, and looking as though he was heading out of the competition.
However, Murphy launched a revival, pulling back four frames on the spin to force a decider. He had a chance to win it at the death, but missed a vital blue which allowed Si to close out victory after all, shocking all those who took advantage of Snooker UK Championship betting opportunities before the match. With the clock having ticked past midnight, Murphy was left to lick his wounds, and directed his ire at the World Snooker Tour format which sees amateur players such as Si used as top-ups in professional events.
“I am going to sound like a grumpy old man but that young man shouldn’t be in the tournament,” Murphy raged. “It is not fair, it is not right. I feel extremely hard done by that I have lost to someone who shouldn’t even be in the building.
“I don’t know why we as a sport allow amateurs to compete in professional tournaments. This is our livelihood. This is our living. We are self-employed individuals and not contracted sportsmen. We don’t play for a team.
“I am not picking on him as a young man, he deserved his victory. Amateurs should not be allowed in professional tournaments, the end. This is our livelihood. This is how I put food on the table. This is how I earn money. Since turning professional at 15, I have earned the right to call myself a professional snooker player. He hasn’t done that. He shouldn’t be on the table.”
It was an astonishing rant, and there are a number of takeaways from it. The first is that Murphy was clearly speaking in the heat of the moment after a difficult loss. There is no doubt that, if he’d been asked the next day, he would not have been quite as derisory towards amateur players as he was. Many accused him of being a sore loser, but there is a kernel of truth to Murphy’s complaints, and other top players have defended him in the days since.
To qualify for a place on the World Snooker Tour, and earn a two-year tour card, you have to win one of four Q School events. The players who progress through this are welcomed onto the tour, while those who don’t are able to compete on the amateur circuit.
However, with no tournament ever seeing 128 professionals enter for a variety of different reasons, amateurs are invited to fill up the remaining places, hence match-ups like we’ve seen at the UK Championship, where someone like Si was taking on a player of Murphy’s far greater stature.
The problems arise when amateurs are able to compete both on the professional tour and the amateur circuit, which is seen as unfair to those who actually qualified through Q School and earned their professional status. Without the rankings to worry about, amateurs are able to treat tournaments as something of a free hit, which means they are perhaps not under the same amount of pressure as those down towards the bottom of the ranking list, who are fighting to maintain their position among the pros.
Of course, there is a debate as to whether Murphy has any right to weigh in on this argument at all. As an established top-16 player, he is under little pressure either in terms of tour survival or finances, with the ‘Magician’ having earned £200,000 for his appearance in the final of the World Championship back in the spring.
As someone heavily favoured in the UK Championship snooker tips, many would expect Murphy to be beating the likes of Si with ease. It’s the players lower down the list who might have a greater claim that the top amateurs are getting too easy a time of things.
The anger directed towards Murphy has undoubtedly gone over the top. Yes, his comments were ill-advised and pretty disrespectful, but at least it has sparked discussion in the game. Too often we hear that there are no longer characters in snooker as there were in the 1980s, and yet whenever a player speaks their mind they are often shot down.
Murphy has sparked a huge debate in the snooker world, and it will be interesting to see how the discourse develops over the coming months.