English Amateur Snooker Championship: Still a Great Competition to Win…

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The English Amateur Championship is snooker’s oldest event since 1916 and in this short post, we’re just going to reference players who’s won it and who has gone on to win professional ranking events or World Championships either as a winner or a runner-up! 

But first, the last winner from 2018 was Joe O’Connor, who went onto become a pro in the 2018/19 season and proudly reached his first ranking event semi-final in his first season as a pro at the Welsh Open. Although it doesn’t reward those who win it with a tour card, a handful of players have gone on to win multiple and double-figure ranking events and even World titles! But the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan reached a final as a runner-up,  but still went on to win five World titles!…

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The others are:

• The Whirlwind Jimmy White, still competing on the tour at 56, and also winning World Seniors events, went on to win 10 ranking titles and appeared in six World finals!!
• Terry Griffiths, a winner in 77/78, now a coach to some of today’s top pros, went onto becoming World Snooker Champion in 1979.
• Nigel Bond went on to win the 1996 British Open beating four-times World champion John Higgins 9 – 8.
• Martin Gould won the EAC in 2002/07 and then lifted his first ranking title in the 2015/16 season at the German Masters beating Belgium’s Luca Brecel 9 – 5.
• Banned from the tour, former professional Stephen Lee went onto win 5 professional ranking titles!
• Jimmy Robertson won it in 2009 and on the pro tour, his breakthrough has come only this season winning the European Masters in Lommel when beating Joe Perry in the final.
• Stuart Bingham won the EAC in 1996 and 19 years later was lifting a World title!
• Welshman Ray Reardon, the Dracula, won six World titles
• John Parrott was an Erunnerder-up but went on to beat the Whirlwind in a World final in 1991.
• Joe Johnson, now a commentator for Eurosport and regular on the new World seniors tour lost to Terry G in 78, but went on to win a World title in 1986 beating the great Steve Davis
• David Lilley, a winner of the EAC three times, and who beat Andrew Norman, manager of the South West Snooker Academy, in 1999, came within a whisker of turning pro but a few days ago in Israel, as he lost out in the final of the European Amateur Championship to Poland’s Kacper Filipiak, 23. Norman was a runner-up in the EAC last year to O’Connor.

Here’s a tweet from a semi-finalist last year and former pro that says it all about the EAC…

Through to English Amateur finals weekend. Still a good comp to win.

— Jamie oneill (@jjo147) 3 March 2019

The EASB finals weekend 2019  will be played in the summer in June and is normally played either in the South West Snooker Academy Gloucester or the Star Academy in Sheffield…

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