IT ENDS with a trophy lift at the sport’s most prestigious venue, accompanied by an emotional BBC snooker montage of thrills and spills and the adulation of the audience packed into the Crucible Theatre, right in the heart of Sheffield city centre.

But it starts in a sports hall on the outskirts of town. A state-of-the-art sports venue at the English Institute of Sport, no less, but as you walk through the leisure centre halls, behind the thick sound-muffling curtains, skirting towards the temporary seating as one of two sets of four tables come into view, it is a far cry from the Crucible.

Referees operate scoreboards with remote controls, multitasking as they tot up the latest break and respot balls, and it costs punters just £12 for an entire day’s snooker.