Snooker in the bloodstream: The fearless Welshman set for O’Sullivan test

When Ronnie O’Sullivan begins his quest for an eighth World Championship crown this week he will do so against a player for whom snooker is in the bloodstream.

Blaenau Gwent is a borough in South Wales encompassing towns such as Tredegar, birthplace of six times world champion Ray Reardon, and the village of Cwm, where Mark Williams grew up before going on to win the world title three times.

This is the green, green baize of home. A snooker hotspot formed in the shadow of the now quiet coalfields. For decades, the menfolk of Gwent were miners. Snooker was a post-work pleasure after long days at the coalface.

Reardon himself was buried for three hours during a mine collapse as a young man. Williams was a boy during the strike of 1984, his father out of work. In these defiantly working-class areas, money was tight but the determination to survive was strong.

Evidence of this mindset has been clearly identifiable in the careers of Reardon and Williams and now the lineage is extended by Jackson Page, a 22-year-old from Ebbw Vale who demonstrated considerable poise by making a century in the deciding frame of his final qualifying round match against Noppon Saengkham.

His reward is a meeting with O’Sullivan, but even before the draw was made he was sounding bullish. “Give me anyone, I ain’t bothered. I’m just ready to go,” he said after qualifying. Not cockiness, but confidence. That Reardon/Williams attitude that anything is possible.

Page has played O’Sullivan twice, losing 6-3 in round one of the 2017 UK Championship and 4-1 in the second round of this season’s English Open, but he recently proved he can set aside the stellar reputations of opponents when he beat both John Higgins and Mark Selby during a run to the World Open semi-finals in Yushan, China.

This was by far his best performance in a ranking event since he first joined the World Snooker Tour in 2019, although he was also successful on his Crucible debut two years ago, beating Barry Hawkins 10-7 with centuries in each of the last two frames.

Williams is a regular practice partner – when he can be dragged off the golf course – and mentor figure. He dished out a particularly hard lesson by hammering Page 13-3 in the second round after that Hawkins victory.

There are also echoes of another player, James Cahill. He arrived at the Crucible in 2019 under amateur status and was widely tipped to be crushed by O’Sullivan but stood tall, took the game to him, seemed to enjoy every minute and pulled off a shock 10-8 victory.

Page does not seem the type to be intimidated, although he is aware O’Sullivan can outplay anyone at his best. Their match on Wednesday and Thursday promises to be an eye-catching affair, one of many in an intriguing first-round draw in which the qualifiers feel much closer in standard to the top seeds than in years gone by.

All 32 players in the final stages are ranked inside the world’s top 45. There are no rank outsiders – this year just one debutant, Joe O’Connor, made it through the qualifying melee.

The Welsh are well represented. Keeping up with the Joneses will be a challenge for Zhang Anda, who plays Jak, a quarter-finalist last year, and John Higgins, who has been drawn against Jamie, the player who eliminated Neil Robertson in the qualifiers.

Ryan Day is back for a 15th time while 52-year-old Dominic Dale is the oldest qualifier for 14 years and back at the Crucible for the first time in a decade.

Experience is a theme of the qualifiers. Former champion Stuart Bingham will play Gary Wilson while Stephen Maguire meets Ali Carter, who beat him in the semi-finals in 2012.

Six of the qualifiers are over 40, meaning 15 players in the field have reached this age milestone.

At the other end of the scale, 21-year-old Si Jiahui is the youngest competitor this year, returning to the Crucible after his remarkable run to within two frames of the final 12 months ago.

In between, Si has appeared in the German Masters final. He was 4-0 down to Wu Yize in the final round of qualifying a few days ago but reeled off 10 frames in a row to prevail 10-4.

He faces Williams in what could be the match of the round, although similar billing could be used for Ding Junhui v Jack Lisowski and Judd Trump v Hossein Vafaei.

Lisowski was at his free-flowing best in easing through two rounds of qualifying, and Vafaei impressively recovered from 3-0 down to get the better of Jiang Jun.

He poses a clear threat to Trump, who always seems to start slowly at the World Championship – although one year when he won comfortably in round one was 2022, where he beat Vafaei 10-4.

The opening round feels like the first fence of the Grand National. After all the build-up, it’s suddenly coming into view and there will be prominent fallers. Even the greats feel nerves. Everyone knows whole careers are defined by performances in the World Championship.

When the matches get longer the bigger names are rightly fancied to relax into the championship and play their best snooker, so these first six days are where they may be most vulnerable.

And this year, there is more than enough quality from the qualifiers to cause plenty of upsets.