It’s not that difficult, surely?
Put the balls in a bag, pick them out in pairs, announce the matches.
Not if you’re World Snooker, who made an absolute omnishambles of their draw this morning.
From tweeting out incorrect matches, forgetting to tweet out other matches, and forgetting to turn on their live stream, nothing went right.
For starters, the whole event was due to be broadcast live on YouTube. A nice idea in principle, but it sadly backfired, when they forgot to actually turn the stream on.
Shall we just make up the draw?
— snookerbacker MBE 🗣️ (@snookerbacker) April 16, 2015
What boggles the mind is that there wasn't someone checking the YouTube stream to make sure it was live and stopping the draw…
— Steve (@MaximumSnooker) April 16, 2015
…until it was fixed. Bollocking up the World Seniors draw is one thing, but to have snooker's big one done so chaotically is unforgivable.
— Steve (@MaximumSnooker) April 16, 2015
With the live stream not actually turned on, at least those following on Twitter could follow the draw, through World Snooker’s Twitter feed.
That’s what I was doing, taking down the pairings as they came. Unfortunately, I came to a problem, which can be summed up by this tweet.
@davehendon @ProSnookerBlog this clears it up… pic.twitter.com/GyYiAzAGbA
— George (@georgeyboy) April 16, 2015
WS tweeted that Murphy has McGill and the BBC say it's Murphy v Hull and Maguire v Magill…erm
— Matt (@ProSnookerBlog) April 16, 2015
Seen it yet? The BBC announced that Stephen Maguire was playing Anthony McGill in the opening round, quickly followed by a tweet from World Snooker, to say McGill would be paired with Shaun Murphy. Things took a further turn seconds later when BBC announced that Murphy was to face Robin Hull.
Who was right? Who was wrong? Were they introducing the first ever triple-threat snooker match?
Eventually, once the draw was finished, it was cleared up. Maguire was playing McGill, and Murphy would be up against Hull. It took them a full 8 minutes to realise the mistake.
With around three or four matches left to draw, the live stream actually turned on, and it actually created more confusion than it resolved. As they finished, I totted up the pairings to find 15 matches. There was supposed to be 16 of them.
I wasn’t the only one to spot it.
So who has Robin Hull got then? Ryan Day?
— Matt (@ProSnookerBlog) April 16, 2015
Eventually, after much confusion, the remaining game was Mark Allen against Ryan Day. It had actually been the fourth match drawn from the bag, however World Snooker forgot to announce it.
The confusion reached such an extent that World Champion Mark Selby had to ask a blogger on Twitter who he would be playing in the opening round. He was drawn to face Kurt Maflin, but wasn’t so sure.
@ProSnookerBlog hi Matt what is going on have I really got Maflin or will it change again 😂
— Mark Selby MBE (@markjesterselby) April 16, 2015
This was actually the second high-profile cock-up at the World Championship draw after the same number was drawn twice from the hat during the first round draw 10 years ago.
After all that, here’s the actual, completed draw:
