So we played our semi final last night and ran into a better team. Right up until frame five there were still realistic possibilities that we could have got an unlikely victory but it wasn't to be.
Chris aka 'Monty' had a poor first frame by his standards; I suspect he was probably a little nervous and it affected his cueing. He also suffered from some bad luck which didn't help. Steve played well and narrowly lost and I was so so. I knocked in a 16 break at the start of my crucial frame, and pushed on for a lead of 21. But then I just started missing stuff. I'd knuckle pots and hit safety shots too thick or too thin. I had two decent chances to win the frame (I'd probably pot those balls about half of the time on average) but missed so in some respects I was disappointed. But my opponent was a good player so I'm not too beat up about it.
My overall feeling is that this semi final was too early for us; I think we can all get an awful lot better than our current standard. Another year or two of league play (providing circumstances continue to allow us to enter) and I think we'll be a decent team.
A quick word on the evening, it was very well organised and it was great to have a referee for the game. There were three other semi finals going on at the same time; it felt very professional and everyone was well mannered. I was impressed and it was great to be involved in an event like it. One minor criticism is that I think it would have been a great opportunity for the really good county players to have mixed with us 'noobs' a little more and given some more encouragement. If this game wants to continue to thrive then it needs the better players to sell it.
As far as my game is going, the big picture must be positive as I've hit five mid twenty breaks this week. This is similar to the sort of scoring I was achieving a few years ago when I last played regularly. However, this afternoon I played and I seriously struggled. Everything just felt out of sorts - my alignment, aim and cueing. I really feel that my technique is holding me back and so a session with a coach is becoming a bigger and bigger priority.
Another thing that I'm thinking of doing is purchasing the 'snooker gym' dvd series by Nic Barrow. It's got 700 minutes of snooker coaching. The draw back is the price - £150. But if the content is good it could potentially be worth a lot more in utility for the improvement it offers my game.
Anyway I'm so tired I'm going to have to hit the pillow. Many apologies if this post has been a little hurried but I need to catch up on two late snooker match nights!
Edit:
Thoughts on Improvement
So I spent the day thinking a little more about how I can improve. Aside from the obvious work on cue action (which I need to try and make as consistently straight as I can somehow) I think that learning to pot the colours off the spots would be a good thing to do as soon as I can.
Potting the colours is a good exercise in my opinion because it's relatively simple. More over many of the positional shots have been well documented and can easily be learned. My goal is to get to a standard where I can clear up the colours about half of the time or more. Currently I can rarely do it so I think this would be a really good target for me to aim for.
If I was to achieve this standard then I could then begin to add reds and gradually make the game more complex. Eventually (hopefully) I would be able to pot a few reds and colours and then clear up the colours that by then should be second nature to me. If I was to consistently make 40-60 breaks then I'd be a much more confident match player and I'm certain that my improved confidence and ability would translate (to some degree at least) into regular play.
I'll record my progress in this area and keep it a mini feature of future blog posts. Until next time!
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