Crucible’s cue ball given middle finger
While Ronnie O’sullivan was recording the fastest win in World Snooker Championship history to move majestically into the second round at the Crucible over the weekend, Kurt Maflin was having rather more problems with his positioning.
During his somewhat slower victory over David Gilbert, the qualifier was attempting to construct a maximum break, only to watch in dismay as the white ball drifted hopelessly out of position, thus scuppering his chances. Demonstrating that for many a snooker player the balls have a personality of their own,
Maflin made it clear where he felt the blame for the error lay. He leant over the table and flicked his middle finger at the misbehaving white.
Match referee Tatiana Woollaston, perhaps sensing she needed to defend the ball’s feelings, approached Maflin to warn him that any more such gestures and he would forfeit a frame. As the event was taking place behind closed doors and there was no sound whatsoever coming from the auditorium, Woollaston thought it best to whisper her admonition.
Maflin initially misheard what she said and thought she was merely telling him to tuck his shirt in. So she repeated her remarks, this time loud enough for the table-side microphones to pick them up. Giving the white ball the bird was, it seems, not on.
Thus did Maflin join a select bunch of sportspeople renowned for their ability to deliver a good gesture. O’sullivan himself had set the precedent at the Crucible. In the World Championship in 2015, he was similarly warned that he would lose a frame if he repeated a bit of manual signage he engaged in while sitting in his chair during a second-round match against Matthew Stevens. His opponent had just missed a red and O’sullivan flashed a derogatory flick of his wrist in Stevens’s direction. Afterwards, he claimed the gesture was “self-directed” which, given the nature of the disparagement, was the most brilliant linguistic excuse.
It was not one, however, that might have served for Barry Ferguson and Allan Mcgregor. In 2009, the two footballers had been punished for breaking a non-drinking curfew imposed by Scotland manager George Burley by being relegated to the bench for a World Cup qualifier against Iceland. Annoyed at their punishment, the two decided to greet any photographer hoping to capture them sitting in temporary exile with a V-sign. Inevitably the pictures were given prominence all over the Scottish papers the next morning, and Ferguson and Mcgregor found themselves subsequently banned for life from international selection.
For the originator of the rude sporting gesture there was a similar lifelong association. When Harvey Smith arrived at Hickstead in 1971 to defend his Derby title, he forgot to bring with him the trophy he had won the previous year. Douglas Bunn, the Hickstead owner and one of the tournament judges, upbraided him furiously.
An unrepentant Smith said it was not a problem as he was going to win anyway, and thus he would simply keep the cup for another year. Bunn expressed significant doubt that would happen. But when he did win, Smith gave vent to his feelings by delivering a V-sign in the direction of Bunn, in a manner that became thereafter universally known as “doing a Harvey Smith”.
Six years after Smith, though, came without question the most provocative hand gesture seen in a sporting environment. In a Second Division fixture against Luton Town, Cardiff City striker Robin Friday rounded the opposing goalkeeper, Milija Aleksic and, after putting the ball in the net, jogged back to the centre circle launching a succession of Harvey Smiths in the direction of the embarrassed keeper.
Astonishingly, he was not reprimanded by the referee, while it is unlikely the incident would have ever entered the annals of sporting infamy had not the Welsh rock band the Super Furry Animals used a grainy image of the moment on the cover of a record they released in 1996 called The Man
Don’t Give a F---.
Now any band seeking a similarly meaningful snap to sell their product need look no further than Maflin’s gesture. Though it is possibly unlikely any rock musician will have written a song entitled The Man Shows the White Ball Who’s Boss.