Belfast caught in the crossfire of calendar dispute

When the scoreboards at Belfast's Waterfront Hall stopped working on Sunday morning delaying the opening session of the Northern Ireland Open, it seemed fitting.

The only World Snooker Tour (WST) tour event on the island of Ireland had been beset with withdrawals in the build-up. Often a tournament might miss one big star, but when four players who won 16 of the World Championships played since 1998 did not make the trip to Belfast this week, it was clearly a significant blow to the event.

The context is key here though. China is a massive market for snooker and last month saw a return to events in the Far East for the first time since 2019 as the country opened up again after Covid.

The Shanghai Masters was followed by two events in the UK, before the players returned to China to play at the Wuhan Open earlier this month.

That is where the Northern Ireland Open came into the equation.

It started with a planned exhibition event in China which was also due to take place this week. The rumoured money on offer in Macau meant that some big names had decided to stay on there, rather than returning to play in Belfast.

Disappointment for Irish snooker fans, but that wasn't the end of it. WST threatened disciplinary action against the players and eventually the Macau exhibition was moved to December, but the damage had already been done.

World Champion Luca Brecel pulled out of Belfast, alongside four-time Crucible kings John Higgins and Mark Selby. None of them were readmitted when the Macau exhibition was moved.

This was compounded at the end of the week by Ronnie O'Sullivan's decision to skip the tournament, the seven-time world champion citing "medical reasons" for his decision not to travel across the Irish Sea.

All told it meant