Yates: Euphoric Europe once again
AFTER hearing the views of a respected American journalist, we now here from English cue sports expert Phil Yates who describes why it will be euphoric Europe once again...
Euphoric Europe Once Again...
By Phil Yates
Cue sports Correspondent, the Times of London.
INDULGE my logic, if you will, but the reasons Europe will retain the Mosconi Cup for the first time are Daryl Peach and Darren Appleton.
No amount of checking and re-checking your programme will unearth a profile of these two potters from opposite sides of the Pennines in northern England.
They are not with you, enjoying the sumptuous facilities of the Portomaso Hilton or winter sun in the Med, and there lies the backbone of my argument.
Any team that can afford to omit not one but two reigning world champions, as Europe have done, must be considered the most fearsome side ever fielded by the old continent.
Peach, the planet's 9-Ball kingpin, and Appleton, winner of the World 10-Ball Championship in October, both achieved their greatest triumphs in that teeming hotbed of pool, the Philippines, but are now victims of a problem that really isn't one, namely an embarrassment of riches.
Europe's quality quintet for 2008, captained by multi-linguist and skilled cueist Alex Lely, serve to emphasise the current, unprecedented strength of the game on this side on the pond.
As Harold McMillan, a former British Prime Minister famously said: "We've never had it so good." Sitting back in Blackpool, Peach is entitled to feel somewhat grouchy, exactly the same applies to Appleton in Pontefract. Undeniably, both have been fallen foul of nothing more than bad timing.
In every other year since the Mosconi Cup began in 1994 they would have been selected quicker than Tony Drago can clear a rack.
Unfortunately for them, 2008 has been an exceptional year for European pool with so many major international achievements creating a selection headache the size of Nevada, the vast state where this success story took root.
Last December in the bowels of the imposing MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip, Europe beat the USA 11-8 to lift the Mosconi Cup for the first time on American soil.
The inspirational Drago was named Most Valuable Player and when he returned to Sin City in May to lift aloft the Predator International 10-Ball trophy, his second Mosconi Cup appearance was under padlock and key.
At his brilliant, mind-boggling best, Tornado Tony is one level above outstanding and on his beloved home island, surrounded by family, friends and fellow countrymen, could well prove unstoppable.
It has also been a tremendous year for the Kaiser, Ralf Souquet, who was honoured to receive, and fully deserving of, his umpteenth call-up.
On reputation alone the ultra-methodical, even more determined German, merits a place. Add to the mix his World 8-Ball title in Qatar this year and Souquet’s selection was a no brainer.
English left-hander Mark Gray, a former snooker pro who once beat Jimmy White in the British Open, headed the competitive Euro Tour rankings when the team was announced while flying Dutchman Niels Feijen is the World Straight Pool champion, having defeated Filipino giant Francisco Bustamante in the final.
That left one spot unfilled until Finland’s Mika Immonen, the 2001 world champion, stole in on the blind side and won the US Open in October.
No sooner had the decisive 9-ball been potted, Immonen was thinking Mosconi Cup and, given such form and obvious desire, his twelfth involvement in this annual trans-Atlantic battle could develop into a deadly dozen for the Nick Varner-led visitors.
This will be Earl Strickland's 13th consecutive Mosconi Cup. In my opinion, it will be an unlucky number, not merely for the combustible Carolinian but his four amigos as well.
Sympathy goes to Peach and Appleton, scuppered by circumstance, but they will cheer as lustily as the next man should a European, any European, sink the 9-ball to complete a successful defence.
