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Geraint Williams is a freelance sports journalist working primarily for Eurosport, writing for their website eurosport.yahoo.com. Geraint covers many sports including, football, rugby, tennis but his most specialised area is in snooker and he commentates and reports on most ranking events and tournaments televised by Eurosport.
Geraint has been a keen snooker player since his teenage years when he played league snooker in Liverpool and won a couple of minor club competitions. As well as currently playing regular snooker he now competes in the West London Pool League in Chiswick, west London.
Geraint first started playing snooker at the age of 10 on a small 6ft table at home in Risca, Gwent, south Wales. His fascination with the game grew rapidly and made the step up to playing on full-size tables at Quadrant Park, Bootle after the family moved to Liverpool in 1988.
At the age of 14, Geraint sought to have some guidance and tuition in the game and had just a handful lessons from Neil Johnson, the tutor and engineer behind the recently launched GravityCue. These however, did not last long as piano lessons were deemed a more conventional and academic source of education.
Just as the majority of sports fans have their favourite team or players, so too did Geraint have his snooker idols as a youngster. Naturally, he always wished to see fellow countrymen such as Terry Griffiths, Darren Morgan, Mark Williams and Matthew Stevens to name just a few, do well. But the player above all, like so many other snooker fans, he admired most was Jimmy White.
For three consecutive years in the early 90’s, Geraint attended the World Championships at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield to see his hero in action including the 1994 final when the ‘Whirlwind’ lost to his nemesis Stephen Hendry 18-17. The long drive home to Liverpool along the M62 with his older brother in almost complete silence (apart from some background music to try and lift the mood) remains a painful memory.
Whilst studying for an MA in Multi-media Sports Journalism in Madrid earlier this year, Geraint continued to play the game and has documented on the recent rise in popularity in the game in Spain which is hosting it’s inaugural national championship this year.
Geraint believes that Eurosport’s coverage is one of the main contributing factors on the increasing popularity of the sport around Europe and hope it’s continuing support for the sport during a time of transition (chiefly, the ban on tobacco sponsorship and smoking ban) will benefit this great game.
By the same token, Geraint wishes Maximumbreak.com all the best in helping those wanting to improve their game, and looks forward to being part of the team.
We would like to welcome Geraint to Maximumbreak and we wish him all the success as part of the MaXimumbreak Team.
