Does the game of Snooker need Judd Trump?

Hi folks,

First, I have to admit, the headline "Does the game of Snooker needs Judd Trump?" is a little provocative.So whats this all about?

Recently I read this article in a huge German newspaper called Süddeutsche Zeitung. For those who are not familiar with German newspapers, its known as a quality paper, maybe comparable to The Guardian in UK.

While it is in general a very nice signal, that non-sport-newspapers write about snooker in Germany, I was sad about the content itself. For two reasons: 

First: it was poorly investigated in some points (e.g. mashing up "Championship League" with "Champions League" or saying "Barry Hearn made major changed in the game" [which is correct], but then only focus on Power Snooker and leave out all the much more important changes like PTC, Q School, move towards China and Europe etc.). 

But okay, snooker is a "Randgruppensportart" (sport for a margin group) here and although Eurosport attracts up to 1 million German viewers, I understand that the market is comparatively small and not every newspaper can have its expert.

But what made me even more think, and what is the reason for writing this article: The media starts to search for another figurehead, after Ronnie seems to become less interesting.

The headline of the article is "Männlich, ledig, jung - und hochbegabt" (male, single, young - and highly gifted) It's about Judd Trump, the so-called "Retter" (saivor) of snooker and that he is the topfavorite of this years championship (beside Mark Selby). Well you can discuss hard about favorites (most of them are out already, lol), but I seriously hope that the sport of snooker is not dependent on a single player. 

Later in the article it is written that successful players nowadays act "fehlerfrei, mechanisch und roboterhaft" (flawless, mechanic and botlike), which is, according to the article, sometimes fascinating but more often terribly boring. 

While I still wonder which player on the tour has 100% stats in pots and safeties (thats what "flawless" means to me), I hardly disagree, that the status quo is boring. I like snooker, because its not screaming for attention, not about gossip, not that much show. Maybe thats old-fashioned.

Okay, Germany neither has a rising star like countries like Belgium or a tradition of famous players in the past like Canada or maybe Australia. So the author probably wanted a story about the world championship and needed an interesting story to build around to generate clicks. But its frustrating nevertheless. 

Snooker does not need saivors or figureheads. The beauty of the game is the game itself. And while Judd Trump is a brilliant player, I could not care less if he is a "playboy", about his hair or if he is dating with so-called celeberties. And if the only way for snooker to grow, is attracting people who do care about that, then please stop growing, snooker.

nuff said.