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...i have my thoughts but i am interested in others before i give my view.  My man run into an all time worldie performance in a world final otherwise he would be a world champ and who knows what would have happened after.   He played unreal stuff in that final and would have won much more potentially with that boost against anyone else other than the guy he faced that day

Probably Hawko or Ebdon.

Ebdon is an anti-vaxxer retweeting Yeadon & Cummins stuff now, ffs.

Old man had a good shout, Tony Knowles.

I've bokked the hawk massively here at 9-6 up!  No idea how i get them beat this easily.  Ebdon was over rated for me.   Not in hawk's class.

Hawk for me talent wise but run into ultra prime ronnie is better than Dott/Kendo/Johnson/taylor/Bingham.  Brutal operator over the tough long session matches

This frame could take a while yet.

It has been a fantastic match very similar to the world final.  Hawk isn't scared of ronnie but that seems to make ronnie play harder against him. 

Anyone can lose 4-0 to ronnie but this is a bottle job for me.

That attempted snooker behind the brown by Hawkins might be the worst shot all tournament.

He is still for me the most under rated player ever.  No one has ever won double figure frames in their first world final and made more tons in the final and got destroyed by the GOAT playiing at his absolute peak.   Ronnie never played better in a world final than that world final.   He respects hawk way more than most pros. 

I've always thought Graeme Dott was hugely underrated despite winning one WC.

Hawkins was playing fantastic stuff a couple of years ago and has been a Crucible specialist for a good while.

Graeme Dott for me too. Superb match player in his prime in a really tough era and the thing is despite winning the WC he ran really bad in other years too. I’m pretty sure he either won, was runner up or was beaten by the eventual winner on 3 other occasions.

Hossein Vafaei  too, consistent top 40 in the world without being able to play in some events as he is refused visa’s by some countries because of his nationality. Still young too and made 3 ranking event semi finals in the last few years.

how on earth can a fella who has never won a major title be one of the most underrated players? surely if anything he is overrated? Id say Bingham by a mile out of the current players ( world champ and masters winner )

I think your first sentence answers its own question

I think I agree. If he had won everything he wouldn't be underrated.

Perhaps underachieving would be a good compromise?

I took it that "most underrated player in history" meant he had not been given enough credit for his achievements and my point being making one major final is not that great of an achievement but hey ho maybe im misunderstanding it

Hawk made WC final and masters final (both triple crown events) fwiw alongside 4 worlds semis in 5 years after his final spot.

Might be a tough sell this but John Higgins up there for me. Never seems to be in the discussion for greatest ever player alongside Hendry Davis Ronnie and imo he definitely should be

The only player apart from Jimmy to lose in more than 2 world finals.  Amazing stat but true.  Higgins won 4 lost 4 in world finals.   No one has ever lost exactly 3 world finals in history.  Countless lost in 2.  Relatively poor masters finals (won 2 lost 3) and UK championship finals (won 3 lost 2) record as well over his career to be considered the GOAT.   Think he is where he should be all time slightly behind the GOAT contenders but ahead of Williams/Reardon/Trump (currently).

Prize money wise for the class of 1992 per wiki.  Ronnie £12m, Higgins £9m Williams £7m.   Hard to compare others with different time lines career wise.  Crazy to think Gareth Bale has been paid more this year on loan at spurs than these three all time legends have made combined in nearly 30 years!   Is that not just insanely sick?  Missed Selby out of the 'just below Higgins' list.   Don't think anyone else has done enough to get into that list yet.  Robertson has potential purely because of his century count if he wins a couple more triple crown events before retiring.   Don't think Ding will get there now.

Think you've got Ronnie, then Hendry, and then can chuck 5-10 in varying orders dependent on your view.

That's an incredible stat.

It is truly insane given most people in the UK would know all three of them and assume quite righly they are all loaded.   Football is just bonkers at the top level and more importantly Bale would rather be playing golf than playing football.  I can't wait to see if he snap retires at the end of next season when his mega bucks deal is over.   He clearly is purely in this now for the money even more than most pro sportsmen are.  Can't knock him either fair play to him.  His agent looks a lawyer type similar to Roy Keane who never had a football agent but employed a lawyer to do his contracts.

https://sportsnile.com/richest-snooker-players/

This really made me chuckle!   Wiillie (RIP) was never worth 10m USD at any point in his life.   He would have done well to ever be a paper millionaire given how much he loved punting.  Nigel Bond at 20th on the list is even more lol.   He is the jobber of all jobbers with zero off the table income.   No idea where this list was made up from in 2021.   Must be a piss take given Willie was dead when it was published

90% of statistics are made up on the spot.

But.....Guilty of throwing frames for money and got off lightly.  Joe Jogia got 2 years for supposedly being involved in fixing a match that didn’t even take place in the end. He could have been Stephen Lee for the last 10 years if things had turned out differently.

Jamie Jones got a year for not fixing anything but for failing to report an approach.

John got 6 months after being caught on camera admitting to and offering to throw frames in the future. John sells tickets, the other two don’t.

Is that true?

Abs incredible to think a part time footballer could have been paid so much isn’t it.

But.....Guilty of throwing frames for money and got off lightly.  Joe Jogia got 2 years for supposedly being involved in fixing a match that didn’t even take place in the end. He could have been Stephen Lee for the last 10 years if things had turned out differently.

Jamie Jones got a year for not fixing anything but for failing to report an approach.

I forgot about Leo Fernandez  who got 16 months for agreeing to make the first foul in one frame.

John got 6 months after being caught on camera admitting to and offering to throw frames in the future. John sells tickets, the other two don’t.

He is on £650k a week gross whiich is £33m a year.  I have no issue with it lots of jokers in the nba earn that on the last year of their last contract when they age.   But its crazy to think Ronnie as talented as he is has made £10k a week for his 25 year career effectively.   Tom Ince earns more than that a year for Stoke!  Ronnie is all time top 10 greatest UK sportsman alongside Taylor.   Just weird how rich guys can still feel relatively skint who are uber talented.

Higgins liike most jocks like me have a life time drink problem!  I think thats well known given he got booted off a flight for being pissed.  He has the fergie nose coming on already.   It's just glasgow.  Without the booze Higgins and Ronnie would have been identical for me record wise after 25 years. 

Talent wise and longevity wise i put Higgins second all time to Ronnie.  But all time his record just doesn't justify being in the GOAT discussion.  At his prime he didn't produce how a GOAT should.  Booze got Higgins relatively but he still had the talent to overcome the booze and be top 5 all time.   If he had never had a drink he might have been the greatest to ever live.

If Bale hadn't been on loan at spurs, he'd have been playing golf in Madrid, earning the same amount of money.

In that year, he would have been pushing top 20 on the all time golf earnings list.

https://www.espn.com/golf/moneylist/_/tour/alltime

All whatabouts, though. Ronnie has had his own issues, and without those he'd ben even further clear than he is now.

Amazing :D

Now that is an incredible stat

Yes, extraordinary stat, especially in the case of Bale.

It's not quite like for like though, the income of footballers & golfers are constructed in different ways.

I believe footballers like Bale have "image rights" which are often packaged as part of their salary.

Golfers usually have very lucrative clothing &/or equipment endorsements. Rory McIllroy, for instance, is shown as $55 million in earnings, which is made up of his prize money. However, his contract with Nike alone from 2013 to 2027 inclusive is worth $180 million. (4 x $20 mill & 10 x $10 milly). Other top golfers would have pro-rata endorsement deals. So those numbers are a little misleading.

I can't imagine snooker players, even those at the very top such as Ronnie, earn much via endorsements. They do earn a few bob from Exhibition matches etc of course.

It does not detract from the point being made, but it does alter the numbers significantly.

Ha love that.

Have a guess at where Tigers wife Elin Nordegren’s divorce settlement puts here in the all time list of golf money winners.

They are incredible numbers, I bet the guy that agreed that deal has ‘moved on’ now!

Ronnie will have similar off field earnings.  The snooker wages were purely on table from events purely for comparison.