Top 10 moments of 2022/23 snooker season: No. 2 – Referee Olivier Marteel halts protester amid World Championship chaos

After the conclusion of another extraordinary snooker season, we pick 10 memorable moments from the 2022/23 campaign as captured by the Eurosport cameras. You can vote for your personal favourite when we reveal our final list of contenders later this month. No.

2 – Break the night with colour in Crucible chaos Ad Olivier Marteel has become used to picking up snooker balls during a storied 17-year career as an elite referee on the main professional circuit, but you can never be sure what the next frame will bring. SnookerRobertson withdraws from Championship League as Carty and Wells advanceA DAY AGO Being forced to lift a 'Just Stop Oil' activist off the old green baize was a new one for the man with the white gloves at the 47th World Championship in Sheffield. The two-time world final referee – who also works as a radiology nurse in his native Belgium – was saluted for his courageous efforts in the front line of the global Covid-19 pandemic three years ago.

«It's my calling, I'm a nurse. I'm there to help people,» Marteel told Eurosport. Little did Olivier know he would be in the eye of another storm decades after Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins battled officialdom when he walked out on the evening of Monday 17th April at the Crucible Theatre.

Just like confronting the pandemic, Marteel did not retreat in the face of further prospective danger when a woman attempted to superglue herself to table two during the tussle between Mark Allen and Fan Zhengi in the first round. Despite the security breach, Marteel's quick reactions halted the protestor as an unsuspecting Allen lined up a shot leading 6-3 in the first frame of their concluding session, preventing the certain curtailment of the evening's play in Sheffield. “Without him