“You can imagine Moira Stuart in 1983 coming on the Six O’Clock News and telling the nation Cliff Thorburn’s had a 147 at the Crucible. It would now get missed because it’s just like, ‘oh, there’s been another 147’.”
That’s the verdict of Murphy, fourth on the all-time list with 10 maximums.
He is not wrong. Thorburn’s maximum was a defining moment for 1983’s armchair sports fan, alongside Steve Cram and Daley Thompson winning World Athletics Championship golds in Helsinki.
It was only the second official maximum, Steve Davis making the first at the Lada Classic in Oldham 15 months earlier. Davis’ reward? One of the sponsor’s cars.
There were just eight 147s across the 1980s, a snooker decade bursting with soap opera drama and towering characters.
For sheer quality, nothing touches the current era.
One long-time Crucible spectator, who also attended World Championship qualifiers at Stockport in the early 1980s, recently said of the latter: “You were lucky if you saw a fifty break all day. People think it was the glory days, but the standard was terrible.”
At the World Championship qualifiers this year, Wales’ Jackson Page became the first player to have two 147s in the same tour match.
Page did not reach the Crucible but earned £167,000 in bonuses and £15,000 for reaching the final qualifying round – total earnings just £18,000 short of Mark Williams’ prize as the tournament’s runner-up.
“Players are chasing their career records and the tour are putting incentives out there,” says Murphy.
“People are more aware of these challenges. They’re practising for them.”
Alex Higgins never had a maximum break on tour. Nor did fellow world champions Terry Griffiths, Dennis Taylor, Joe Johnson, John Spencer and Ray Reardon.
Davis was one and out.
Yet Hill made two inside four weeks. The 23-year-old from Cork cannot believe Higgins never had a maximum.
But Hill says: “There will be a lot of players who haven’t had one. It was always a goal to have my name on the board of those who have. The buzz is great.
“Everyone on the tour now could make one. We’re almost expecting one in every tournament. It’s everyone egging each other on.”
Is Hill pleasingly rich now? Not quite.
His maximums came at September’s English Open and October’s Xi’an Grand Prix, events with £5,000 high-break prizes and no bonuses. Rubbing it in, there were other maximums, so the money was shared with Ali Carter at the English Open and split three ways in China.
Is there a 147 society on tour? A WhatsApp group unlocked by a first maximum?
“There won’t be anything like that. Players aren’t that friendly!” Hill says.
