From ‘bad boys’ to health benefits: The topsy-turvy journey of snooker

At  the time of writing, the World Snooker Championship was in full swing. While some consider the sport less than dynamic, or even pedestrian, others see it as a mental and physical challenge, combining hand-eye co-ordination, a strategic mind, and some on-the-fly mathematical calculations.

There are therapeutic benefits to playing the game, particularly for older people. Research from the UK’s Royal College of Occupational Therapists and Chartered Society of Physiotherapy in 2022 cites snooker as a ‘mindful’ activity. Playing the game also confers benefits in terms of socialising, as well as advantages in terms of light physical activity.

The paper references a number of studies from different countries, all of which seem to indicate that playing provides cognitive benefits and higher mental executive function and processing speeds. These results were transferrable to children, who reported improved levels of attention and better motor functions.

Snooker is also a highly inclusive sport and is ever-more popular among people with disabilities. In the UK, the World Disability Billiards and Snooker organisation has gone from strength to strength in recent years, forming alliances with other similar organisations worldwide. In Ireland, as recently as April this year, Snooker and Billiards Ireland held their first National Disability Snooker Championships, with 18 players in four categories.

There was a time when snooker ruled the sports world. In the 1980s, snooker stars such as Alex Higgins, Steve Davis, and Dennis Taylor had a public profile as high as the top soccer players. In that golden age of snooker, 18.5 million people tuned in to watch the classic 1985 World Championship final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor that ran on way beyond midnight.

During that decade, there were a great many snooker clubs across Ireland. Today, there are just a handful peppered around the country.

Historically, the game was a little less refined than now and the same could be said for some of the players. Notorious hellraisers who undoubtedly helped to raise the profile of the game included probably the baddest of them all, Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins, whose volatile temperament was combined with a child-like vulnerability that endeared him to the snooker-watching public worldwide. A chain-smoker who suffered from alcoholism, Higgins won the World Championship twice but, during his darkest days, was involved in a number of unsavoury incidents, including getting into fist fights with match officials, and even head-butting one of them.

Other unconventional players by today’s standards included ‘Big’ Bill Werbeniuk, who regularly drank up to 10 pints of lager before a match and a similar amount during the game.

A special mention goes to Silvino ‘The Silver Fish’ Francisco, a top South African professional who went to jail after being found guilty of smuggling cannabis in 1997.

The game and the players are a lot more polished these days. The exception is perhaps Ronnie O’Sullivan, an Englishman of Irish-Sicilian descent (his middle name is Antonio). Widely recognised as the greatest player of all time, he has had well-documented problems with drink and drugs and was also in hot water for assaulting an official in 1996. He was also stripped of his Irish Open title after he tested positive for cannabis. He has since cleaned up his act and is still competing at the highest level. The public loves a ‘bad boy’, and O’Sullivan is still the biggest box office draw in the game.

But back to the positives. As well as mental health benefits, playing snooker has been shown to burn calories, improve problem-solving skills, enhance muscle tone and flexibility, and slow the ageing process, among other advantages.

The health benefits of playing snooker may be an under-researched area that could benefit a wide range of patients, or even have preventive attributes.