Robin Hull, a former snooker professional who lives in Tampere, will bring two of the sport’s brightest stars to his hometown in December.
Snooker’s reigning world champion Luca Brecel and 2010 World Champion Neil Robertson will play a long exhibition match in Tampere on December 7th.
The duo will perform their excerpts in the 1,900-seat large hall of the Tampere Hall. The organizer of the exhibition match, which will be played in two episodes, is the only professional player in Finnish snooker history, who won the professional competition Shootout in 2016 Robin Hull.
The Shootout is also a ranking competition, which Belgian Brecel and Australian Robertson skip to participate in the snooker event in Tampere. They arrive in Finland directly from the second biggest tournament of the professional tour, the UK Championship in York, England. Robertson has won that tournament in 2013, 2015 and 2020. Brecel played in the UK final in 2021.
Brecel and Robertson represent today’s brightest elite of snooker, as Brecel is second and Robertson sixth in the recent world rankings. The duo will meet in the semi-finals of the currently ongoing Shanghai Masters tournament. The match is on Saturday.
Big game arena
The big hall of the Tampere building has the largest audience capacity when it comes to venues on the professional snooker tour. Among the English Games, only the Masters tournament held in London’s Alexandra Palace has more seats than the Tampere Hall, 2,200.
– Now for the first time there is an opportunity to organize such an event on the scale of professional tournaments, Hull tells Urheilu.
– The interest has been really big. If this goes well, the stars can be seen in the future.
Hull, who won the under-21 world championship in 1992, has played in all the main snooker arenas in his career, with the exception of London’s Wembley Conference Centre. The Masters tournament was played there until 2006, when the 2,500-seat building was demolished.
In sports circles, Wembley Conference Center is considered the mecca of snooker, with Hull attending the Masters since 1994. Hull was also in the stands to witness one of the most famous misses in snooker history, when the Irish Ken Doherty failed to bag the last black ball while attempting a maximum break of 147 points.
You can watch Doherty’s maximum effort at this link (YouTube).
Now the Tampere native wants to offer similar experiences to the Finnish public. The Finns got to witness top snooker in June, when Mark Williams and Stuart Bingham played in Valkeakoski.
At that time, Hull played in a tournament-style event, but this time he will leave the bat in the bag.
– For me, the dream situation is that I sit at the back of a full stand watching and feeling the atmosphere in the role of a fan, says Hull.