Snookered by my brothers

My brothers, Dara, Shane, Conall and I had just sat down for a Turkish brunch in Muswell Hill. We rarely get to spend time together just the four of us, but today was a treat, since Conall had got us tickets to watch the opening day of the Masters Snooker in Alexandra Palace. I’d been looking forward to spending time with my brothers – and Conall’s delightful friend Mark – for what I expected to be a lovely, full-day hang with some mildly confusing sports action thrown in.

I don’t know much about snooker, even if I’ve always found something alluring about a trigonometric pub game played in near silence by men dressed like cruise-ship hypnotists. I say as much to my brothers, and furnish my ignorance with a tale from childhood. I was 14 and, having finished a museum trip early, our teachers announced they were taking us to a snooker hall in Derry. I was as delighted as everyone else by the idea, since teacher-sanctioned frivolities were a rare treat in my schooling. More delightful still was the place itself and the smell of spent fags and stale drink,the illicit thrill of all those low hanging bar-lights illuminating a seemingly endless row of untouched tables. I held no illusions that I’d be good at a game I’d never really played, but felt it likely I’d prove as fast a learner as the other novices present.

Novices, it turned out, were in short supply. I took little notice of the full half of our class who were switching hands between strokes and hitting trick shots with their arms behind their backs. It made sense that some of my classmates would be accomplished players, but thankfully I’d be playing against my own friendship group, a cohort who’d never once uttered the word “snooker” in all the time I’d known them. What I hadn’t realised is that Derry’s entire population of teenage boys had spent every single night of their lives playing to the death in underground contests to which I was not invited. Everyone knew by heart the inscrutable tactics of safety exchanges and cushion work. Even Gerard Duffy, a boy you wouldn’t trust to navigate the intellectual challenge of eating a chicken fillet roll, knew the value and purpose of each of the shiny balls, their various colours, and the order in which they must be potted.

I was, in fact, so obviously the most ignorant player in the building, that my constant miscues and total unfamiliarity with any of the rules, provoked not mockery, but pity and alarm. The next day, snooker returned to never being mentioned by anyone I knew, and that trip to Pot Black became something like a distantly remembered fever dream. I’d not thought of it in decades, until I found myself relating it to my brothers – and Mark – over our hot plates of menemen and sujuk. “You’ve never played snooker?” they each said in turn, in a tone you might adopt if someone told you they’d never held an egg. I felt an urge to remind them that I had played snooker. Once. In the amusing and relatable story I’d just shared with them.

Instead, I asked them to explain some of the rules as best they could, and tell me what I could expect from seeing it in a live environment. They abandoned any attempt to teach me potting order, and assured me I’d pick it up as I watched, and assure me that I can whisper questions to them without earning the wrath of fellow spectators or earning a personalised “Shhhh!” from the referee. These notes continued all the way to Ally Pally, and along our climb up to our seats ahead of the opening match between Shaun Murphy and Wu Yize (pictured).

As the first frame got underway, I found myself besotted. The hush, which I worried would be funereal, was instead electric. Any fears about boredom were immediately dispelled as I discovered I adored every tense second, every lightly taxing sum, every seemingly impossible geometrical quandary. I soothed in the presence of John Virgo and Stephen Hendry, whose commentary is piped into an earpiece throughout each game. I marvelled at the adrenaline engendered by watching balls of phenolic resin dawdle towards their target with unerring – and sometimes, joy of joys, erring – accuracy.

At the intermission, I raved about all I’d seen and Conall looked at me the way I imagine a Scientologist would if I’d ever agreed to fill out a survey about Dianetics. Perhaps realising we haven’t caught up, he asked me how the kids were getting on. “Oh, I dunno,” I said, “fine I guess. But I really wanted to ask you more about positional success percentages…”

Photo by John Walton/PA Wire