Well, not concluded actually. But concluded for me because I go back to Hull tomorrow.

And this afternoon, in spite of my support, Judd Trump lost to Marco Fu. I got the impression that Judd’s “naughty snooker” has become less “naughty”, less spontaneous, less dangerous. Marco played a good, disciplined, consistent “straight” kind of game. And it was great. It works for him, and he won. It may not work for Judd. His spontaneity, and risk-taking, his flashiness, seemed to work. I suspect he gets talked to about the necessary “maturing” of his game, where “maturing” has a strong component of “growing up” in its meaning. This is a bit of a theme in snooker, I think. Marco was introduced today by a number of people who paid tribute to him, but I was slightly worried by one of them who seemed to be saying his game will go fine now because “he’s married now, he’s settled down.”

Maybe. But to Judd I sort of want to say, Don’t lose your spontaneity, or the unpredictability and danger in your game. Keep a bit of flashy.

One of the nice things John Virgo had to say about Marco today as part of the introduction was that “he always has time for everybody. And he never says no if someone wants an autograph.” As I left the auditorium this afternoon he was proving John Virgo right: there he was, surrounded by a great crowd holding autograph books, programmes and pieces of paper, and he seemed completely unable to say no to any of them.