Snooker's best in Auckland for Oceania Champs

  • Breaking
  • 17/03/2015

Baseball and softball have some competition to become Olympic sports from snooker, with the sport making an official bid to be included in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Snooker is played competitively in 90 countries, including New Zealand, which this weekend is hosting the Oceania Snooker Championship.

Molrudee Kasemchaiyanan is New Zealand's queen of the table, and this weekend her focus is pocketing the championship.

"I just love the game, the type of game, I just got hooked on it since I was so young," says Kasemchaiyanan.

Both snooker and billiards titles are on the line - with world number four Matthew Bolton the red-hot favourite. While Bolton plays cue sports semi-professionally, Wayne Carey took up the sport to relax from his job as a butcher.

"You're holding an 18-ounce cue, it's such a delicate and pleasing game… I love it, I'm not embarrassed to say it," says Carey.

And he shouldn't be embarrassed, with 22 Auckland titles and eight national titles under his belt.

Snooker meanwhile is on a winner, with Barry Hearn, the man behind darts' rise in popularity also bringing pots of gold to the players potting black.

"Snooker around the world, there's now 10 ranking tournaments," says Bolton. "There's over £8 million (NZ$16 million) in prize money, and it is going up and up and up."

The Oceania Champs are being held in Auckland this weekend.

3 News

source: newshub archive