Events

The people of Sheffield have gone snooker mad, if you believe the posters plastered around town. Not snooker mad as in angry, like the folks of River City upon learning about trouble (that starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool), but rather mad as in excited and enthused, like the people of River City when envisioning 76 trombones and a big parade.

Every year in late April and early May, Sheffield plays host to the World Championship of Snooker. The best snooker players in the world come to this South Yorkshire town to determine who, at least for this year, is the best person in the world at striking little balls with another ball that had, in turned, been struck by the end of a long stick.

When I was a teen, we used to play snooker at the local pool hall. Growing up in the suburbs where I did, as an underage teenager who couldn’t go to bars, you really had three choices for entertainment – movies, bowling and the pool hall. So my friends and I could often be found at Formac Billiards on Plains Road in Burlington knocking around billiards balls.

We had a choice of two different games, pool (eight-ball) and snooker. Eight-ball, the most widely played “cue sport” in the world, is a game where there are 15 balls – 7 solid, 7 stripes and a black eight ball. In eight-ball, you are assigned (usually through sinking a ball within the first few frames) either solids or stripes. You have to sink your 7 balls, and then the eight ball before the other guy to win. This game is very popular in bars as a pay per game activity, as games go very quickly. Thus, after I got old enough to drink and go to bars, most of my billiards activities ended up being eight-ball.

Back in high school though, when we were looking to fill a whole evening, snooker was the game. It is slower paced, and you have a lot more balls to sink on a larger table. You need to sink the 15 red balls, and then the 6 other coloured balls in order. Once the last ball (the black one) is potted, you add up the points and the person with the most points wins.

Unlike eight-ball, a lot of the strategy in a well-played snooker match is to leave your opponent with a poor shot. If you manage to leave your opponent with no direct shot at the ball he next needs to hit, that is called “a snooker.” The game of snooker is much more cerebral and slow-paced than eight-ball.

In high school, we would occasionally try and play the chess-match-like intellectual game of leaving our opponent snookered, but rarely had the ball control and skill necessary to pull it off. Instead, we were more likely to go for “maximum kinetic energy release,” i.e. hit the balls as hard as possible to get as many balls rolling around the table and hoping for something to happen. If a ball by chance happened to drop into a pocket, we would look up and give a slight nod, indicating that of course that is exactly what you expected to happen.

Back in the here (Sheffield) and now (actual the recent past of Tuesday night), I figured that I couldn’t pass up a chance to see the world’s greatest players play the game that figured so heavily in my high school life. It was a chance to see snooker the way it is meant to be played. It would also have been incredibly lazy of me not to go, seeing as the matches were being held a block and a half from my hotel.

The games had been sold out for weeks, but luckily due to some last minute returns, I was able to pick up a ticket at the box office on the day for the evening session. I gave the woman at the Crucible Theatre box office my £17, and in return she gave me one ticket for seat K44 to see the match on table one – 23rd ranked Nigel Bond versus world number nine Peter Ebdon. The full matches are 19 frames, which are split into two separate fixtures, usually of 9 or 10 frames. Ebdon and Bond had already played 8 frames, and Bond was up 5 to 3 over Ebdon.

The 980 seat Crucible Theatre in the city centre of Sheffield is usually used for putting on plays, but every year since 1977 it has held the World Snooker Championships as well. With only 980 seats, there isn’t exactly a bad seat in the house, so as I grabbed my seats I was impressed of the view I had of the tables. The theatre is set up with two tables, and my seat near the centre of the theatre had decent views of both.

I entered just as the player introductions were finishing, and they were introducing the “Thunder from Down Under,” Australian player Neil Robertson. Neil ran out, his highly-structured blond hair bouncing up and down, and waved to the crowd. There was loud applause for Neil, and then the announcer heralded the arrival of Steve Davis. The crowd grew much louder.

Steve Davis is the most successful snooker player in the world, having won more titles than any other, including 6 World Championships in the 1980s that he took here in the Crucible. Though now 51, he still plays snooker at a competitive level, as well as being a well known TV commentator. He was honoured with an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) in 2001.

The applause for Steve Davis, OBE died down, and a screen partitioning the two tables from each other lowered from the ceiling. Despite the screen, sitting up in Row K near the centre of the theatre, I actually had a pretty decent view of both tables. As such, I could watch both the action on Table 1 (Bond versus Ebdon) as well as being able to see 85% of Table 2 for the Davis – Robertson match.

As play was about to begin, the theatre hushed to a silence. The TV cameras took up their positions, focusing on the players’ sombre faces of concentration. Had I not chosen to come down to the Crucible this evening, I could have stayed home and watched the action on the BBC. Snooker is a prime time sport here in England. When Davis was winning his 6 World Championships in the 1980s, it was figured that he was on TV more often than the Prime Minister.

Play started with the traditional break. This involves knocking a few of the reds a few centimetres, leaving the other player with nothing to shoot at. The other guy then steps up, and ticks a red ball with the white, leaving his opponent with no opportunities to sink a ball. The first guy steps up, and then spends a good four minutes walking around the table, considering his options. During this time, the crowd is silent except for the occasionally cough.

Finally, he sees a good shot, bends down and lines it up. The crowd holds its breath, waiting to see if this is the point when the first point is scored. The player lets the cue slide back and forth through the crock between his thumb and forefinger a few times, eyes down at table level to ensure that he has the shot properly lined up. The crowd sits perfectly still, awaiting to release their breath and any nervous energy until after the shot. The player pulls back the cue, eyes the shot one more time, and…

…stands up and reconsiders the whole table.

It is not a very fast paced game. The players could probably grow moss if they didn't make the occasional walk around the table.

All this time between shots allowed me to take a good look around. The crowd was pretty mixed, from young kids to senior citizens. There were folks that looked like they had just knocked off dry walling sitting next to guys in collared shirts who’d removed their ties to relax after a long day in the office. There were women in the crowd, some with boyfriends and some in small groups of other girls.

Cameras and cell phones were not allowed (thus no pictures, though I have a few from the big-screen in Tudor Square outside the theatre for the overflow crowds), and the crowds adhered to the rules. Most of the 980 seats were filled, and everyone behaved impeccably, being silent when appropriate, offering polite applause at the first point, any difficult shot succeeded and any time a player snookered his opponent. Occasionally a voice would call out, “Come on, Steve,” offering a vocal cheer for Davis, but there were no other vocalisations during the matches, other than the referee announcing the scores.

The action down on the floor was pretty leisurely paced. The most emotion seemed to come from the white-gloved, tuxedoed referee, whose job it was to replace the coloured balls on the table after they had been sunk and occasionally give the white cue ball a nice rub down (perhaps the cue ball gets tense and needs a massage). He would scowl at the crowd anytime there was a noise from the darkness, and if people were speaking at anything above a whisper, he would growl, “quiet, please.” He reminded me of Lurch from the Addams Family, but with a slightly better vocabulary.

The players themselves were all wiry thin. I would have expected a few more fat guys, after all it isn’t exactly a highly active sport, but I guess all the fat guys go into darts. All the snooker players are skinny. They are all dressed similarly, in black pants, white shirts, black bowtie and a vest, making them appear like banquet hall waiters on the lam. Ebdon wore a blue vest instead of black, making him stand out. Everyone’s vest had a BetFred patch on it (sponsor of the tournament), but Ebdon’s vest included a patch advertising Emirates Airlines. Ebdon, the Arsenal of the snooker world. The blue vest, extra sponsorship and similarity of the name Ebdon to Udon, the tasty Japanese noodle were all factors in my decision to support Ebdon during the match.

Of course, as there was no cheering allowed, supporting was more of an internal activity, involving nodding silent to myself and smiling when Ebdon made a decent shot, and frowning when things didn’t go his way.

During one of the matches, someone’s digital watch beeped the hour. The ushers craned their necks to identify the offender, and once the offender was identified, they came over to have a quick word with the poor gent who forgot to silence his watch. The man must have been humiliated. For the next five minutes, I made sure to sit extra still, lest the ushers single me out. The crowds at snooker matches make the crowds at golf tournaments look like riotous mobs on a rampage.

For some reason, the theatre had a faint chlorine smell, reminding me of sitting in the bleachers of public swimming pool waiting for swimming lessons to begin. I finally came to the conclusion that watching snooker was like a mix between being in church and being at the swimming pool, but with less organ music, no splashing and less anticipation of having a nice dip in cool water.

Ebdon managed to win 2 frames, pulling even with Bond at 5 frames each. Bond then won the next frame, pulling himself up 6-5 over Ebdon. Over on Table 2, Robertson was pulling away from Davis, up 3 to 1. At this point there was a short break to allow the fans and the players to hit the toilets and grab a pint.

I stood at the bar drinking a £3.10 pint of Carling, and contemplated the action I had seen. Each frame was taking close to 30 minutes to finish on average, with one of the frames stretching to almost 45 minutes. At one point, over on table 2, Robertson and Davis struck one lone red ball around the table (and between the coloured balls) for 15 minutes without anyone scoring a point. It was strategically excellent snooker and I appreciated that, however it was about as dull a spectator sport as I could imagine.

During the matches, I had found myself yawning more than a few times. I caught a few others in the crowd mouths agape in a yawn as well. It was almost 9:45, and the match was probably not even halfway through. I imagined the horror of falling asleep in my seat and, god forbid, starting to snore. If the ushers nearly had coronaries over a digital watch beep, imagine the revulsion they would display towards me if I started to snort-grunt-sputter as I do when I snore.

BetFred, the online and telephone betting service that sponsors the World Snooker Championships, had a booth set up in the lobby. One of the TVs was showing the Liverpool – Arsenal match, which Liverpool was leading 2 to 1 with 58 minutes gone. One of the ushers announced that play was about to restart. I debated staying out in the lobby and watching the football match, or heading back into the theatre. I decided to give the snooker one last try.

Of the next 30 minutes, I yawned about 60 times. Occasionally I would hear cheers from out in the lobby from those who had made the opposite choice and stayed in the lobby to watch the football. Watching paint dry in a humid environment would have been more exciting and probably quicker than watching the snooker match. I was stuck in my seat until the frame ended though, but I quickly decided that at the end of the frame, I would flee.

The frame ended and I got out into the lobby just in time to see the Liverpool and Arsenal players leaving the pitch, having wound up playing to a 4-4 tie, including 1 goal from each side in injury time. It was a match that was described as a “thrilling act of theatre” by Kevin Garside in the Telegraph, and a “classic” on the BBC.

I sighed and headed home, letting the snooker matches unfold themselves without my observation. Ebdon, the Japanese noodle man, ended up losing to Bond in an upset. Robertson, meanwhile, took a commanding lead over Davis, ending the day up 7 to 2.

If the people of (the fictional) River City, Iowa in the Music Man were really concerned about not letting their teenagers get in trouble, they shouldn’t of started a marching band (after all, we all know what happened that one time… at band camp…). They should have changed that pool hall into a snooker room, all that standing quietly and contemplating strategy, that’s got to be good for the discipline of young minds.

A fantastic spectator sport, though, it does not make.

Hillsborough stadium, just outside of central Sheffield in the part of town called Hillsborough is home to football club Sheffield Wednesday. Sheffield Wednesday Football Club was established in 1892 to keep the local cricket club in shape during the off season. The cricket club was named for the day of the week on which they played, Wednesday. The name ended up transferring over to the FC club. The club is also known as the Owls after a mascot given to them in the early 20th century. In 1899, the club moved to a football stadium just to the north of Hillsborough Park. Though the stands have received some renovations over the years, the Owls have played on the grounds in 1899.

On April 15, 1989, the grounds was to play host to an FA-Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. As was standard practice at most important matches, fans were segregated to try and keep any trouble to a minimum. Nottingham Forest fans were assigned the Spion Kop End, with Liverpool fans being given the Leppings Lane side of the stadium, named after the street on which the entrance to the stand is.

Kick-off was scheduled for 3:00 pm, with fans told to show up 30 minutes before the match. However, fans were late, many due to unscheduled road works on the M62 that runs between Liverpool and Sheffield. Many fans were still outside the stadium as kick-off time was drawing near.

Due to the fears soccer hooliganism, at the time fans were enclosed by high steel fences to keep them off the pitch. As more and more Liverpool fans tried to stream into the stadium, those at the front started to be crushed against the fence, with no escape routes. Generally, police and stewards would have stood at the entrance to the tunnel directing fans away from the full central pens and to the side pens. This did not happen during this match.

With kick-off near, the police outside of the stadium were unaware of the crush at the front of the stands. Fearing a crush of fans or violence outside the stadium, they opened a large gate that was to be used as an exit, causing a rush of fans into the stadium.

When the match started at 3:00 pm, already fans were being killed in the crush. Fans at the back of the mass were unaware of the problems up front, and with their focus on the match, continued to surge forward. Some Liverpool fans were lucky enough to climb over the fences, alerting the police to the problem. The police stopped the match at 3:06 pm.

Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield was at the match, and in April 14th edition of the Sheffield Star is quoted as saying, "The game kicked off and there was what looked like crowd problems. Then people starting climbing over the fences to get out. There were more and more people trying to get out. The referee stopped the game and the players walked off. It took a long time for the scale of disaster to become apparent, for people to realise that people were dead on the pitch, that there was resuscitation going on. People were absolutely stunned. Things like this don't happen at football matches."

The human crush ended up killing 96 Liverpool fans and injuring over 700 people. The force of the fans must have been enormous. Richard Caborn, MP for Sheffield Central, was also at the match. "I was on the terrace and saw one of the bars which was supposed to keep crowds from surging forward. It was bent, and I was told it would have taken something like a quarter of a tonne to have done that."

The deaths and injuries at the match brought about many changes in football stadium in the UK. Standing room and general admission with penned-in fans were replaced by all-seating stadiums.

In 1999, on the tenth anniversary of the disaster, a memorial was unveiled at Hillsborough in the memory of the fans who died there. Today, the day before the 20th, some of those who lost people, as well as other Liverpool fans affected by the tragedy, stopped by to drop off flowers, pictures and scarves in honour of the dead, before heading off to see Liverpool play Chelsea in an EUFA Champions league Quarter final game.

The anniversary brings about mixed feelings here in Sheffield, as people are obviously horrified at the loss of life and the injuries, but also sensitive about the South Yorkshire police taking a lot of the blame for the tragedy. Many from Liverpool are still angry that those in charge of security that day were not charged with any crimes.

However, the people of Sheffield will mark the disaster quietly tomorrow, with two minutes of silence from 3:06 to 3:08 pm in the city centre, at Meadowhall (the regions largest shopping mall) and of course at Hillsborough stadium and along Leppings Lane.

This last weekend the Sheffield Steelers of the Elite League Ice hockey league here in the United Kingdom clinched the championship for this year. After beating the Newcastle Vipers 4-1 on the road, the Coventry Blaze lost to the Hull Stingrays, mathematically eliminating the last team that could challenge Sheffield for the title. According to Sky Sports, there was "a wild night of celebrations in South Yorkshire," though I will admit I was up in Sheffield on Sunday, and must have missed the celebrations.

The coach of the Steelers is Dave Matsos, who is from my hometown. I believe I went to school with his brother, but I'd have to go and check my old year books, which currently are in a storage locker near Toronto airport, and thus not exactly accessible to me right now.

I've posted a number of pictures of Sheffield so far, and many of them have looked something like this...

...a pretty town centre. That's because, for the most part I haven't actually made it out of Sheffield town centre. The train station, my hotel and my office are all within a 10 minute walk of each other in the town centre, so that's mostly what I have seen so far.

The name of the hockey team, though, gives a clue that Sheffield isn't all pretty town squares and pedestrian malls, but has an industrial past and future. There has been a long line of innovations in the steel industry and metallurgy in Sheffield, dating back to Benjamin Huntsman creating the "crucible technique" in the 1740s, which allowed the wide-scale manufacture of steel. Stainless steel was invented in Sheffield, and the process for silver-plating cooper was invented here, the metal becoming known as Sheffield Plate.

Secondary to the steel industry in Sheffield, but probably more important across the entire region (known as Yorkshire) was coal mining. Last week marked the 25th anniversary of an event related to coal mining that shook the foundations of the United Kingdom. In 1984, the Thatcher government announced the closure of 20 coal mines, putting twenty thousand miners out of work. The coal mining union was very powerful, and the government had prepared for a long action by the miners. They had stock piled coal and converted power stations to burn gas instead of coal.

On March 5th, 1984, the members voted to strike at Cortonwood Colliery in Yorkshire, starting what would be a year long strike that spread across almost all the coal mines in the UK.

On the 15th of March, David Jones, a miner aged 23 and father of two, was killed picketing in Ollerton. Mr. Jones was the first to 10 deaths related to the strike that would occur over the year.

The strike broke the union, and after the strike was settled, pits started to close. In 1984, before the strike, 180,000 miners working at 170 pits across the UK. By August 2006, the UK coal industry was reduced to employing around 5,600 people.

Today, most the closed mines have been reclaimed for other uses. The site of one of the most violent battles of the miners strike was at Orgreave, where about 5,000 pickets faced up to nearly 6,000 police on the 18th of June. Orgreave was closed in 2005, and is now being redeveloped as a site for housing and commercial interests, including a hi-tech advanced manufacturing park in association with Boeing and Sheffield University.

Sheffield and Yorkshire haven't forgotten their history of mingin, though. There has been a number of events around the region this past week to mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the strike.

For me, stuck without a car in central Sheffield, though, I haven't gotten to see much in the way of any of these events.

There is, though, a frieze on the town hall that commemorates a nubmer of the industries and people that made up the history of Sheffield, including one panel dedicated to the mining past of the region.

With the frieze, as Sheffield continues to change, the past won't be lost.

This week is half-term up in Sheffield, which is a late winter school break for the children. It is like the March Break I used to have back in Canada, but with less March and more February.

To entertain the little kiddies (thus keeping the parents sane) and keep the older ones occupied so they don't turn into ASBO hoodies, Sheffield has put up a bunch of carnival rides in the city centre, with rides in Orchard Square, the Peace Garden, Barker's Pool and outside town hall.

I work right by the city centre, and the building we work in seems to be heated by the power of 1,000 fusion reactors, so we all keep the windows open. As such, I have spent the week at work listening to the sound of rock music blasting from speakers and kids screaming with delight at the rides. I can't complain, though. After all, my own six-month long half-term break just ended a month ago.

Here's some photos from the carnival, as well as some shots of Sheffield's city centre at night.

The Sheffield Town Hall clock tower with some of the rides underneath

Tickets! Get your Tickets! Tickets!

Busy shoppers rush by the rides. Come on, folks, stop and have some fun!

Spinning! Lots of screaming from this one.

Burgers, hot dogs, fish and chips. Just don't go on the rides right after eating.

The youngest even get a fun airplane ride right by town hall.

The fountains in the Peace Garden, with the town hall in the background.

Green space in the Peace Garden, taken last week, when there was still some snow on the ground. Luckily for the kids on half-term, the weather this week is much nicer, with temperatures almost up to 10 C late in the week.

Town hall with wrought-iron fence.

Stainless steel balls, covered with running water and lit up from underneath by neon lights. Millennium Square.

Millennium Square again, with more of the balls visible. You can see the Winter Garden greenhouse in the background. I'll write more on that in a future entry.

Spinning round and round on the Sizzler.

Working on loading up the Sizzler.

I knew before arriving in England that there are differences between Canadian English and British English. They ride up and down in lifts, wear trousers over their pants instead of pants over their underwear, keep their luggage under the boot of their car and deliver goods in lorries.

I know all these things because I’ve watched British TV shows and movies, and read British books.

Something has bothered me since getting here, though. I’d encountered most of the words I’ve learnt from TV since getting here, and even learned a few new words. One of those words I knew hasn’t appeared – Shilling.

Pounds and pence, quids and pennies - I’ve heard lots of words for the money, but I’ve never seen or heard a reference for a shilling. That is because the shilling no longer exists.

The British Pound dates back to the Sixth century, when King Offa of Mercia introduced the silver penny. 240 pennies weighed one pound, and thus £1 was worth 240 pennies. To split up the difference, the Shilling was introduced, equal to 12 pennies, meaning that one pound was worth 20 shillings.

The coins adopted abbreviations based on Roman names, with the penny being abbreviated as d for denarii and the Shilling abbreviated as s for solidi. The pound took on the Latin librae, thus the L shape of the £ sign. Thus, prices were originally written as 3s 4d (3 Shillings and 4 Pennies). Over time, as with most things, instead of writing out the s, a short-hand of a slash was used, so that 3/4 became 3 Shillings and 4 pence. This was back in the days when “s” was written to look more like an “f,” and thus the slash looked somewhat like the first letter of Shilling.

3/4 would be spoken as “3 and 4.” By the 1960s the lowest bill was the 10 Shilling note, called the “Ten Bob,” and therefore a common budget price was 9/11, one penny short of the paper money.

Calls to move away from this fractional system based on 12s and 20s and to a decimal system date back to the early 1800s, after France introduced the decimal Franc in 1795. Various schemes were proposed, from splitting the pound into 1000 Mills to replacing the Pound with the Royal (4.8 of which would be worth a pound).

Finally in the late 1960s, it was decided that the pound would remain given its role as a key reserve currency, and that it would be split into 100 “new pence,” to be represented by the abbreviation “p.” Prices are now written as £5.40, pronounced as “5 pound forty,” or sometimes “5 pound forty p.”

On the 15 of February, 1971, Decimal Day arrived. Shilling and “old” Pence disappeared, replaced by the “new pence.”

So that is what happened to the Shilling. Previously worth 1/20th of a pound, it was replaced by a coin worth 1/20th of a pound, the 5 p piece. For a while folks would continue to call the 5 p piece a “bob,” the nickname that the Shilling had, but over time that disappeared as well.

Today, the word Shilling is relegated to the past, but at least now I know when I am handling my change that those 5 p pieces would have, almost 40 years ago, been a Shilling.