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Should Foul and a Miss have been called

Poll ended at 21 Apr 2022

Yes
0
No votes
No
3
100%
 
Total votes : 3

Was it a miss?

Postby Minimum Break

Seeing as there is some down time in the Snooker world this week, I want to revisit the shot Mark Williams played when 41 in front with 35 left in the decider again Neil Robertson in the UK Semi Final. From 2.10 below



Dominic Dale said in commentary that a miss could have been called. Here is the relevant rule:

14. Foul and a Miss
(a) The striker shall, to the best of their ability, endeavour to hit the ball on or a ball that could be on after a Red, or a free ball nominated as a Red, has been potted. If the referee considers the Rule infringed, they shall call FOUL AND A MISS unless:
(i) any player required penalty points before, or as a result of, the stroke being played and the referee is satisfied that the miss was not intentional

I personally think the miss was intentional and as such should have been called a Foul and a Miss. Williams was not snookered and has only missed the red as he chose a more difficult route than was necessary, in order to make sure he didn't give away 7 points instead of 4.

Does anyone agree or disagree? Am I being too harsh?

Re: Was it a miss?

Postby Empire State Human

Paragraph (i) basically means treat the case as one of the pre-1991 incidences, before the Foul & Miss rule came into its (roughly) current form. There's no way Williams' shot would've been called a miss in any match held in the 1980s.

When snookers are required, it would be very unusual for a referee to call a miss. I think it happened once with Ronnie O'Sullivan and Alan Chamberlain when Ronnie was bored and obviously trying to pot colours when he came to the table when there was a red left.* But that's about the only time I recall. Otherwise, if the shot is roughly in the direction of the ball 'on', even via cushions, with roughly the right amount of speed, there won't be a miss called. That's about as strict as the criteria was for so called 'intentional' misses before the new miss rule. The player would be given the benefit of the doubt.

*edit: the clip in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vFd0BHG4XE

Re: Was it a miss?

Postby Minimum Break

Thank you for the detailed reply ESH. I was not watching snooker in the 90s, so don't have a historical grounding here for the miss rule.

I just think the fact he was not snookered makes this different to a normal miss. There is no doubt that Williams could have hit the red so what doubt is he being given the benefit of?

Does anyone have other examples of a player missing the ball on when snookers were required and they were not actually snookered? I can't think of any.

Re: Was it a miss?

Postby McManusFan

I don't think so. He was clearly intending to hit the ball, and it wasn't as if he was trying some crazy 12 cushion trick shot to do it.

Re: Was it a miss?

Postby Juddernaut88

Have there been many instances when a player has needed snookers, failed to escape and a miss has still been called due to the referee believing they have deliberatley fouled?

Re: Was it a miss?

Postby Minimum Break

Juddernaut88 wrote:Have there been many instances when a player has needed snookers, failed to escape and a miss has still been called due to the referee believing they have deliberatley fouled?


I can't think of one. Normally, there is no advantage in snooker in giving 4 points away when your opponent needs snookers, which would make an intentional foul very unlikely. It was just this situation with a 6 point lead made it a much better outcome than potentially hitting or knocking in the black.

Re: Was it a miss?

Postby Empire State Human

There is no doubt that Williams could have hit the red so what doubt is he being given the benefit of?

He's given the benefit of not playing an 'intentional' miss, to use the phrase you quoted from the rules. He was trying to hit the red from behind, or from the side, to avoid fouling the black - because fouling the black is, of course, against the rules as well. If anything, he was probably more likely to commit a foul stroke playing at the red directly than via a cushion.


https://youtu.be/7SEtS_C8rLY?t=1491

Here's a foul from Stevens v Thorburn 1983. Stevens needs 2 snookers at 24:50. Thorburn attempts to hit the yellow, but is clearly going a very weird route, probably to minimise the chance of leaving a free ball after which Stevens could've won. He gets nowhere near the yellow, but the referee doesn't call a miss, even though the commentator points out, like Dale, that it was a possibility. The choice of escape is played to the score, in a similar way to Williams' shot. I share this clip to show how far out generally a shot could be before it was considered a 'miss', and escape attempts like this were fairly common practice in the 1980s. It's the whole reason the modern foul and a miss rule was introduced.

But there is this situation, as you point out, where it defaults back to this older interpretation, because the rules distinguish between a situation where snookers are required. Partly this is because it's been argued it's never in the interests of the striker to give away foul points. The fact that Robertson needed 2 four-point snookers but only 1 seven-point snooker wouldn't be taken into consideration - it's just the way the scores panned out in that frame and it's tough luck that Robertson just so happened to be so far behind in that situation. Robertson still got the benefit of the 4 point foul.

The second part is that you really can't enforce foul & misses in the snookers required stage of a frame in exactly the same way as the start of the frame, otherwise you'd have players 'playing on' for 16 snookers, hoping that their opponent would do what Trump did against Selt in Turkey and give 60 away in fouls. It would kill the game.

Re: Was it a miss?

Postby Minimum Break

Thank you for the detailed explanation and the clip. :hatoff:

Empire State Human wrote:The second part is that you really can't enforce foul & misses in the snookers required stage of a frame in exactly the same way as the start of the frame, otherwise you'd have players 'playing on' for 16 snookers, hoping that their opponent would do what Trump did against Selt in Turkey and give 60 away in fouls. It would kill the game.


I agree completely with this of course, which is why the distinction in the rule exists. So that a player behind needs to lay X number of different snookers rather than just 1 good one.

However, I still can't agree with you that snooker today should be refereed according to the rules of 30 years ago. Or that any unwritten 'benefit of the doubt' can easily be quantified. As any cricket fan would know, the old saying there of "the batsman gets the benefit of the doubt" is as old as the game itself, but has never been written in any law of the game.

I also wonder if anyone else, like me, places any importance in the wording "the referee is satisfied that the miss was not intentional". To me, that places less burden of proof than if it was written as "the referee believes the miss was intentional" But maybe I am just over-thinking that!

Either way, it would have been a gutsy call by the referee at such a crucial stage, and I certainly think Williams would have felt aggrieved if it was called a miss.