Ronnie O’Sullivan v Judd Trump (From This is Hampshire)

Ronnie O’Sullivan v Judd Trump

6:00am Saturday 18th June 2011

• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

IT’S the match the whole snooker world wants to see.

And it will happen in Southampton.

The Rocket and The Juddanaut (a nickname Trump dislikes) meet head on at Southampton Guildhall on Thursday, November 3.

Matchroom Sport will bring the Sky Sports-televised PartyCasino.com Premier League Snooker to the city for the third year running, following the excellent turnouts in 2009 and 2010.

If fact, last year’s event was a record sell-out. A spokeswoman for the promoters told me: “We’ve never sold out on an opening night of the season before.”

That’s no surprise, considering who was in town. Ronnie O’Sullivan drew 3-3 with Marco Fu and Shaun Murphy beat Ding Junhui 5-1.

According to the cheers from the crowd, most had come to see O’Sullivan in the flesh. Now it’s Judd Trump who is fast becoming the fans’ favourite.

Perhaps it was his huge smile as he sat in his seat and let his gaze wander around the Crucible Theatre as the crowd cheered and clapped before one session of the World Championship final in May.

Or perhaps, even though the 21-year-old (he’ll be 22 when he visits Southampton) lost 18-15 to Scot John Higgins, the smile never left his face.

A child of the technological age, Trump has 53,459 followers on Twitter and 4,906 friends on Facebook (they’re social networking sites, your honour...people send messages to each other...yes, apparently they still use mobile telephones as well).

According to his Facebook page this week, Trump has hay fever and had a “Wikid time filming question of sport!!”

How does he describe himself on Twitter? “part time snooker player, full time international playboi!!” (His spelling, not mine.)

Ding is again on this year’s bill. He faces the 2010 world champion Neil Robertson. The two winners then meet on the same night.

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here