The black-ball final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis remains one of the most iconic nights in British sport – and now the Northern Irishman has opened up on it ahead of this year's Crucible
Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis served up an all-time classic in the 1985 World Snooker Championship final
Steve Davis still can’t catch a break against Dennis Taylor, 40 years on from the black-ball final. Davis made the Crucible his own personal playground in the 1980s but the final he’s most famous for is the one he didn’t win in 1985.
Having been 8-0 up and 9-1 ahead against Taylor, the Nugget looked odds-on to wrap up what would have been a hat-trick of titles. But the bespectacled Northern Irishman had other ideas and fought back to win 18-17, sealing his triumph on the final black.
The two men chased the last remaining ball around the table like snooker’s version of cat and mouse, before Taylor finally held his nerve to sink the pot, cementing his place in British sporting history in the process. Some 18.5m people tuned in past midnight to watch the climax of snooker’s most famous match at a time when interest in the game went through the roof.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary, Taylor, Davis and John Virgo have been touring the country recreating the iconic pot and the moments before it. But Taylor still won’t let Davis make that final black – not that the crowd would want it any other way.
“I don’t think it would work if he potted that black, you know,” Taylor says cheekily when we put it to him that he might let Davis take the spoils for once. "That’s the beauty of these shows, I get to pot that black every night we play!”
Given it’s been 40 years since that night at the Crucible, you might be forgiven for thinking Taylor gets bored of talking about one moment in a career that had so many other highlights. You’d be wrong.
“I’ll never tire of talking about it,” he admits. “Steve is amazing when we do these shows and we re-enact the last four colours; he’s still so enthusiastic about it but he’s also so funny.
“We have a lot of fun with it as well as bringing the memories back for everyone. The audiences are amazing and it’s brilliant the number of people who show up to watch us; they all remember where they were on that night.
“You never get fed up with it. We’ve had a ball doing these shows for a few years now.” The black ball isn’t the only thing from the final that went down in snooker folklore. Taylor’s iconic finger-wagging celebration and his ‘upside down’ glasses also have their own place in Crucible history.
Taylor’s ‘goggles,’ as he called them in the 1986 hit ‘Snooker Loopy’, were specially made for him by ex-pro and commentator Jack Karnehm to combat his astigmatism. Without them, he admits, he would never have won the World Championship.
And while Taylor might have won 18 frames to take the title from Davis, who would go on to win a total of six Crucible crowns of his own, the County Tyrone potter now needs to sort the lenses on his specs! “I’ve still got the glasses,” he says, with a smile on his face. “But I need to get one of the lenses repaired.
“I did a chat show over in Ireland so I brought them with me, and one of the lenses shot out across the studio floor on live television! I need to get it put back in.”
Taylor’s glasses are as much a part of Britain’s sporting tapestry as Torvill and Dean’s purple Olympic costumes or the ball from the 1966 World Cup final. Even in their current state, they would fetch a pretty penny to the right collector – not that Taylor would ever entertain the idea.
“I still keep them with the trophies I won and the cue I played with,” the 76-year-old BBC pundit admits. “Someone once offered to buy the cue and the glasses but there’s no way I’d ever part with those.”
Taylor became a household name after beating Davis, but it didn’t change him as a person at a time when snooker’s rock and roll image garnered plenty of attention. “I didn’t change after the final,” he says. “I didn’t move houses or anything like that. But everywhere you went after that, everyone was talking about it.
“I remember a few days after, I was in the back of a London taxi – and London cabbies don’t get excited about many things – and he stopped his car for all of his friends, so I had to wave and shake hands with quite a few black cab drivers that day!
“I did allow myself one extravagant purchase, though. I went and spent £50,000 on a car, and I couldn’t believe I did it really. When I think back to when I first moved to England at 17, the first car I bought cost me £15! “I often joke about it, but it was the same price as a new block of chalk!
“To spend £50,000 on a motorcar was a bit silly back then, but I suppose I earned it anyway.”
.jpg)
0 Nhận xét