Joe O'Boye

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Joe O'Boye
birthday March 6, 1960
nationality EnglandEngland England / IrelandIrelandIreland 
professional 1985-1997
Prize money £ 74,164
Highest break 138
Century Breaks 12
Main tour successes
World championships -
Ranking tournament victories -
Minor tournament victories -
World rankings
Highest WRL place 35 (1988/89)

Joe O'Boye (born March 6, 1960 ) is an English-Irish snooker player . From 1985 to 1997 he played on the professional tour for 11 years .

Career

Wild youth

Joe O'Boye started during his snooker career for England and for the Republic of Ireland and was part of Irish teams in competitions. But he grew up in Leicester, England . His early role model was the local Willie Thorne , from whom he copied his play style of offensive break building. Thorne was his coach at times and he played at his snooker club in town. O'Boye was talented but also undisciplined, and had problems with gambling and alcohol. So it came to a falling out between the two and he was banned from Thornes Club. He went to London and befriended Jimmy White , two years his junior , with whom he had a lot in common. At Home Internationals 1980, they drank together before a game that 17-year-old White promptly lost and that almost led to his expulsion. White won the English amateur championship in 1979 and O'Boye followed him a year later. As a result, they were both qualified for the World Amateur Championship in Tasmania . After their arrival in Australia they made off without permission, they drowned and gambled away their entire budget of £ 1500 on the first day and had to get by for 10 days without money. But while White won the tournament, O'Boye was eliminated with just one win.

First professional years

White went professional straight after, O'Boye applied for professional status three times in a row and was rejected three times because of his antics by the WPBSA . The third time, Thorne was one of the three members of the WPBSA panel. His regular club had become the King's Cross Snooker Club in the heart of London, where he trained with Tony Drago and Peter Ebdon , among others . In 1985, at the age of 25, he was finally approved. He had his first major success at the Grand Prix , where he beat young star Stephen Hendry, who was also starting his professional career this season, and two professionals from the top 48 with Bob Chaperon and Perrie Mans , before he narrowly scored 4 in the round of 32: 5 lost to Jimmy White. In the next two tournaments he reached the third round. In the 1986/87 season he again defeated the world number two Cliff Thorburn at the Grand Prix and came back under the bottom 32. In all other ranking tournaments he reached the round of the last 64. But he had his greatest success at the Irish Professional Championship . With a victory over Eugene Hughes , the number 20 in the world, he reached the final, but then had no chance against world number three Dennis Taylor at 2: 9. The tournament was not part of the ranking, so O'Boye had not come very far with 55th place after two years as a professional. The following year he formed Team Ireland with Hughes and Paddy Browne at the World Cup , but they could not replace the eliminated Taylor and Alex Higgins , who had won the title three times in a row.

At the beginning of the next season he managed the International Open for the first time make it into the last 8. Then came some weaker results before the British Open in 1988 - including victories over top-32 player Dean Reynolds and John Campbell - placement could repeat. A first round defeat at the World Cup prevented him from rising above 35th place in the ranking. It went all the better at the 1989 World Cup . With wins over Tony Wilson , Danny Fowler and Barry West , he made it into the final round of the last 32 at the Crucible . He lost his first match in the famous arena 6:10 to Silvino Francisco . Before that, the 1988/89 season was not so successful. After all, he also reached the round of 32 at the UK Championship , but otherwise he lost in the first main round of the ranking tournaments at the latest, which is why he stepped on the spot overall.

Setbacks and end of career

In his fifth professional year there was only one high point: reaching the round of 32 at the UK Championship after defeating world number tenth Doug Mountjoy 9-8 . As a result, he was just able to stay in the top 64. But the setbacks increased. At the following UK Championship, he helped Tony Drago to the fastest victory in a best-of-17 match: he lost 9-0 in just 81 minutes. Throughout his entire career, however, his alcohol problems and failures that led to penalties and bans dragged on. The low point was his suspension at the 1991 Classic for insulting employees and his exclusion from the World Cup a few months later. The season started promisingly with the quarter-finals at the one frame shoot-out and the round of 32 at the Asian Open with a victory over number 16 Alain Robidoux . So he fell back further and further and only because the WPBSA lifted the professional restriction in the 1990s, he was able to continue to participate in the major tournaments.

In 1992 he could no longer stay in the top 100 with just one top 64 result at the Classic . He stayed in the top 200 until 1997, when he could no longer hold his own. At the International Open in 1994 he reached the round of 32 for the last time with another victory over Alain Robidoux. After that, he never made it into a main tournament. In the 1996/97 season he only appeared four times and lost all matches, two of them to zero. This practically ended his professional career at the age of 37. Until 2001, O'Boye only took part sporadically in the newly introduced second-rate UK tour and in the Masters and World Cup qualifications open to all.

successes

Ranking tournaments:

Other professional tournaments:

Amateur tournaments:

swell

  1. ↑ a b c Profile of Joe O'Boye on CueTracker (as of 2018)
  2. ↑ a b Pocket Money , Gordon Burn, Faber & Faber Ltd, 2019, ISBN 978-0-571-26697-5 , Chapter 3 'Accountability, Creativity, Graft' ( excerpt from Google Books)
  3. ↑ Behind the White Ball. My Autobiography. Jimmy White with Rosemary Kingsland, Arrow Books, London 1999, ISBN 0-09-927184-2 , Chapter 8 'Rowing to Tasmania' ( excerpt from Google Books)
  4. ^ Snooker: Positive thinking takes Ebdon to the summit , Brian Viner, Independent, January 11, 2003
  5. ↑ International Snooker , BBC Two England, March 17, 1988
  6. ↑ On this week - November 16, 1990 - HIGH SPEED DRAGO , Chris Turner, Eurosport, November 16, 2009
  7. ↑ Black Farce and Cue Ball Wizards: The Inside Story of the Snooker World , Clive Everton, Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh 2007, ISBN 978-1-845-96199-2 , Chapter 7 'The New Kids on the Black' ( excerpt from Google Books)
  8. ↑ World ban for O'Boye , Irish Independent , January 5, 1991, pp. 18/19

Web links

personal data
SURNAME O'Boye, Joe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English-Irish snooker player
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1960