Northern Ireland Open chaos as snooker fans fume after scoreboard malfunction
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Snooker fans at the Northern Ireland Open were left bewildered as they were unable to see the scoreboard after the electronic scoring system malfunctioned during first-round games. Neil Robertson was 1-0 up against Wu Yize but had to revert to a manual scoreboard in order to tally up the points in Belfast.
The Australian went on to claim a 4-1 win to set up a second-round clash with Jordan Brown, but those in the crowd were only able to keep track of the scores by jotting down each point with a pen and paper.
This also affected Cao Yupeng’s 4-3 win over Robert Milkins and Ma Hallong’s 4-3 victory over Ryan Day, though Robertson was able to see the lighter side of the incident as he revealed that after the match he even signed two fans’ piece of paper that they were using to keep up to date with the contest.
“Nice win this morning against Wu, who will no doubt be a huge star in the game,” Robertson wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) “Electronic system went down so we had to use the manual scoreboards afterwards these 2 brothers no older than 10-11 got me to sign their piece of paper where they were tracking down the scoring with a pen.”
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The World Snooker Tour (WST) released a statement on the matter after receiving intense backlash, though they failed to apologise for the scoreboard malfunction. The statement read: “We are aware of current issues with scoring and are doing our utmost to solve them as quickly as possible. Currently, Neil Robertson, Robert Milkins and Ma Hailong lead 1-0.”
Though supporters tuning into matches were less than impressed at the failings. Replying to the WST’s statement, @InTheBalls147 responded: “1 point for addressing the issue on social media… Minus 1,000,000 points for it being 2023 and there are robots on Mars… but can’t find out the score for Robbos match.”
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Their sentiments were echoed by many more fans, as @camy93_ added: “There are never these issues in the China events. This happens regularly at Home events. It’s not fair on the players or the fans who are constantly having to face difficulty in trying to follow the matches and scores.”
While @dorokydo pointed out that issues such as these should be prioritised over dealing with the ‘Macau 5’ as Luca Brecel, Mark Selby, John Higgins, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and Ali Carter all agreed to play in an exhibition event in China while the Northern Ireland Open was being contested and were warned of punishments before the Macau event was postponed.
They wrote: “Detrimental issue…scoring site abominal, live scoring breaking down repeatedly… this needs to be solved before talking about kicking top players out please!”
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