Nick Metcalfe snooker column: Belfast is a proper success story

In his latest snooker column, Nick Metcalfe looks ahead to another eagerly awaited Northern Ireland Open in Belfast, and asks why more tournaments don’t stay at the same venue. Nick also asks, why are we waxing lyrical about Zhao Xintong as he returns to snooker following his ban after the sport’s biggest match-fixing scandal?Belfast a week to relish for everyone who loves this gameThe Northern Ireland Open, which begins on Sunday, is an undoubted success story of modern snooker, an autumnal week that we all relish.Some wonderful finals and stories have certainly helped to establish the tournament on the calendar. We’ve seen a first ever ranking title for Mark King, that long overdue return to the winner’s circle for Mark Williams, a marvellous treble for Judd Trump and a raucous double for home town favourite Mark Allen.But there’s another, maybe even bigger, factor in the event’s impressive blossoming too. Venue and location. The atmospheric Waterfront Hall in Belfast. Now totally synonymous with the tournament, it shows very clearly the value of finding somewhere decent to host an event and then sticking with it.Aside from the first Northern Ireland Open in 2016 – when there were more “noises off” at Belfast’s Titanic Exhibition Centre than in a decade of West End productions – the Waterfront has been the place to be (let’s treat the Milton Keynes Covid staging of 2020 as something separate).Compare that to the other Home Nations events. Let’s start with the Welsh Open, a tournament that has a proud history going back more than three decades, but has been all over the place venue wise in recent times.From 2015 to 2020, it was at the Cardiff International Centre. Then Celtic Manor on the outskirts of Newport held the event behind closed doors during the pandemic in 2021, before a move across the road to the International Convention Centre in 2022. It was soon pack your bags time again though, with the Welsh Open heading north to Llandudno’s Venue Cymru for 2023 and 2024.Meanwhile, the Scottish Open did have four successive editions at Glasgow’s Emirates Arena, from 2016 to 2019. But after the Milton Keynes Covid interlude in 2020 the tournament was bizarrely in Llandudno in 2021. In fairness to organisers, they were genuinely blindsided late on, with the Emirates informing the World Snooker Tour that the venue would not stage an event sponsored by a betting company. Now the tournament is back north of the border again, but in a different city, with Edinburgh’s Meadowbank Sports Centre hosting in 2022 and 2023.If this all sounds confusing, it’s positively smooth sailing compared to the English Open. Good heavens, where do we start.First time round in 2016, the tournament was at Manchester’s EventCity. It seemed popular enough, although the final had to be briefly halted because heavy rain hammering down on the roof was making such a racket. A year later, it was across the Pennines to Yorkshire and the Barnsley Metrodome, where I was asked if I wanted a towel to go swimming every time I headed to the press room. It wasn’t a match made in heaven.Ronnie O’Sullivan said the 2018 and 2019 venue, Crawley’s K2 Centre, smelt of urine (actually, it didn’t). Milton Keynes stepped in for two editions, and now the English Open is at the Brentwood Centre in Essex. Which is at least functional, if we’re gracious enough to skirt over the heating packing up as snow fell outside in 2022. I think you get the message by now. Snooker is nomadic. Plenty of other events throughout the year are the same. The British Open has only been back four years, but has already had three different venues. The World Grand Prix has been staged in Llandudno, Preston, Cheltenham, Milton Keynes, Coventry, Cheltenham and Leicester since 2015. The Players Championship has been in Llandudno, Preston, Southport, Milton Keynes, Wolverhampton and Telford since 2017.In some ways, I do genuinely think chaos is part of the charm of snooker for many of us. The history of the sport has often been a haphazard one. But at the same time, constantly switching venues around surely can’t be ideal for selling tournaments to fans.To some extent, punters do like knowing where they stand. How can events get properly established if they’re permanently on the move? The Belfast public now knows that the autumn means top level snooker at the Waterfront. Big crowds and good atmospheres are a given there.Putting on tournaments is no easy task, with all manner of practical and financial considerations at play, but it feels like there’s too much of a ‘one and done’ approach in snooker. I still feel a bit annoyed on behalf of Hull, which hosted a poorly attended Tour Championship last year and lost the prestigious tournament straight away.I realise we can’t enjoy an Alexandra Palace or a Tempodrom – ideal established venues for the Masters and German Masters respectively – every week. Life obviously isn’t as easy as that. But I also can’t believe snooker needs to live out of a suitcase to this extent.What do we want? More fixed venues. When do we want it? Ideally, from nowFlowery language over Zhao Xintong return doesn’t feel rightI believe in rehabilitation. And I’m pretty sure I always will. That said, I’m surprised that as Zhao Xintong makes his return to snooker, the language has been quite this flowery.Zhao is back in the game having served his ban following the sport’s biggest match-fixing scandal.It’s true that the 27-year-old didn’t directly fix a match himself – Zhao accepted charges of being a party to another player fixing two matches and betting on matches himself – but this was still serious wrongdoing, as part of a sorry episode that has blighted the sport.Yet when the former UK champion made a maximum break and then won the latest Q Tour event in Sweden, the reaction from some quarters was positively prodigal. Do we really need to be waxing lyrical to this extent?I’d prefer to see a toning down of such breathless enthusing over Zhao for a good while yet. At the moment, it doesn’t feel like we’re getting this right at all.