BRING ON THE KIDS
Higgins vows to put his expertise to good use and help develop new Scottish talent
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP finalist John Higgins has vowed to help nurture the next generation of Scottish snooker stars. same hymn sheet and it’s great news.”
Legendary Scot Hendry is now retired and Higgins knows he has limited years left at the top of the sport after what has been an illustrious career.
Emerging Scottish talent Anthony McGill has won two ranking titles this season and looks set to carry on the tradition of tartan triumph.
But Higgins insists Scottish fans need to enjoy their current crop of stars while they’re still around.
The 41-year-old said: “Hendry’s retired and myself, Alan McManus, Stephen Maguire and Graeme Dott won’t last forever.
“Hendry got involved and that’s what you need, you need those role models.
“From that you had players like McManus, myself, Maguire and Dotty coming through and then young Anthony McGill looking up to us.
“The lack of players coming through doesn’t surprise me. It’s going to be hard for Scotland to reproduce that and we need to enjoy it while we’ve got it. “It was predicted about 25 years ago and it threw the sport open when they just discarded the amateur game. “That probably put the first nail in the coffin in terms of players coming through.” When Hendry was dominating in the 90s, multiple world champions Higgins, crowd favourite Ronnie O’Sullivan and two-times Crucible winner Mark Williams all blossomed as part of snooker’s Class of 92. Since then the same standard of player hasn’t burst on to the scene and Crucible king Hendry insists it’s a widespread problem across the UK, not just Scotland. He said: “I don’t think the problem is just in Scotland, it’s in the UK as a whole. “One of the biggest problems is that there’s nowhere to play. “In the 80s and 90s there were lots of snooker clubs, you could find one in every city centre. “There was a boom back in the day.”