Expect The Unexpected
| 11:36 UK time, Saturday, 12 January 2008
Playing against the unpredictable genius that is is one of the toughest challenges in snooker. Turns out that covering him for television can be pretty challenging too.
'With most matches you can usually predict what's going to happen and plan your programme accordingly', said Graham Fry, who heads up our snooker coverage with TWI.
'But with Ronnie, you have to have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C'.
The last 13 months highlight the point. Having to Stephen Hendry, Ronnie then in another memorable final against Ding Junhui, a title he begins his defence of this Sunday.
Ronnie's 2007 also included a fourth consecutive , five century breaks, including a 147, in five winning frames in the Northern Ireland Trophy, before another eventful climax to the UK Championship in December - although even that came with the odd scare for our production team.
It was in the early stages of his semi-final with Mark Selby that Ronnie nipped out for what appeared to be a standard comfort break. We waited for his return, and waited…
'It was seven minutes before he came back' said Graham, who was helping produce the show that day. 'With most players, you think 'he's not well', but with Ronnie, you're never sure what's going to happen next'.
What did happen next was that the match went to a final frame decider, which Ronnie - his eighth in competition - before cruising to the title with a 10-2 victory over Stephen Maguire the next day.
'That's the genius of Ronnie,' added Graham. 'With some 147 breaks, you look back and wonder how it happened. The one in that semi was one of those where he got to 32 and we all said 'this is on'.'
Maguire has an early chance of revenge when he takes on Ronnie this Sunday as part of our opening day's coverage, which also includes Shaun Murphy take on Allister Carter and Ryan Day against Barry Hawkins.
As the old maxim goes, 'expect the unexpected'.
