“You can imagine Moira Stuart coming on the Six O’Clock News in 1983 and telling the nation that Cliff Thorburn’s score at the Crucible was 147. Now it would be missed because it’s just like, ‘Oh, there’s been another 147’.”
This is a decision from Murphy, who is fourth in the all-time list with 10 maximums.
He is not wrong. Thorburn’s crowning achievement was a defining moment for armchair sports fans in 1983, when Steve Cram and Daley Thompson won the World Athletics Championships gold medal in Helsinki.
This was only the second official maximum, the first being achieved by Steve Davis at the Lada Classic at Oldham 15 months earlier. Davis’ reward? One of the sponsor’s cars.
There were only eight 147s in the 1980s, a snooker decade full of soap opera drama and huge characters.
For sheer quality, nothing touches the current era.
A long-time Crucible spectator, who also attended the World Championship qualifiers in Stockport in the early 1980s, recently said of the latter: “If you saw a break of fifty all day you were lucky. People think these were the glory days, but the standard was dreadful.”
At the World Championship Qualifiers this year, Wales’ Jackson Page became the first player to score two 147s in the same tour match.
Page did not reach the Crucible, but earned £167,000 in bonuses and £15,000 for reaching the final qualifying round – total earnings just £18,000 less than Mark Williams’ prize as tournament runner-up.
“Players are chasing career records and the Tour is providing an incentive there,” Murphy says.
“People are more aware of these challenges. They’re practicing for them.”
Alex Higgins never got a maximum break on tour. Neither did fellow world champions Terry Griffiths, Dennis Taylor, Joe Johnson, John Spencer and Ray Reardon.
Davis was another out.
Yet Hill made two within four weeks. The 23-year-old Cork player can’t believe Higgins never got maximum points.
But Hill says: “There must be a lot of players who don’t have one. It’s always been a goal to have my name on the boards of those who do. The buzz is great.”
“Now everyone on the tour can make one. We’re expecting one at almost every tournament. Everyone is cheering each other on.”
Is Hill now happily prosperous? Not enough.
His maximum performances came at September’s English Open and October’s Xi’an Grand Prix, with high-break prizes of £5,000 and no bonuses. To top it off, there were other maximums, so the money was shared with Ali Carter in the English Open and split three ways in China.
Is there any 147 Society on tour? A WhatsApp group unlocked by first max?
“That won’t happen. Players aren’t that friendly!” Hill says.
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