Snooker player Joe Perry says the Crucible Theatre without a crowd will be a 'strange' feeling Perry: "It's going to be strange if that place is empty because that is the pinnacle of snooker" Colin George and the administrator David Brayshaw persuaded the The building went through a £15 million refurbishment between 2007 and late 2009 – opening during that period only for the 2008 and 2009 World Snooker Championships.The Crucible reopened as a theatre on 11 February 2010 with a production of The Crucible is a producing theatre, meaning shows are designed and rehearsed in-house. "I think Mark Williams, I don't always believe a word he says, but he has said he's had a couple of 13-dart legs," he said. When it was announced, the morning session had begun and spectators were inside.So what happened now? The crowd side of it is something different - Barry has generated that. The World Snooker Championship will pilot the safe return of spectators to sporting events, with a reduced crowd to be allowed at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. In fact, it was only when we arrived at the Crucible that we received confirmation we could queue up at a safe distance from one another and head inside to watch Ding Junhui versus Mark King.By this point Hearn had upgraded his golden ticket claim, saying that we fortunate punters now owned “ultimate golden tickets”. The snag? "Perry was asked to spill the beans on snooker players who could play a bit of darts. The car park is located within five minutes' walk of the Crucible on Charles Street. “But it will take some getting used to if that’s the new normal.” That, it seems, is a challenge all sports – not only snooker – are going to face in the coming months. Following the announcement from the UK Government that the easing of certain restrictions in England has been postponed, there will be no access for fans to the Betfred World Snooker Championship from Saturday 1 August. Bizarre day for snooker fans at the Crucible provides dose of new normal.
Parts of the north – including Bradford, where I live – went back into lockdown before Boris Johnson announced that the pilot events, which included the world championships, being held, as usual, at the Crucible in Sheffield, would no longer be open to fans. The snooker itself was probably the most ordinary part of it all, with Ding’s opening break-off almost feeling as if it had put a pin in the carnage for only a few hours and allowed snooker fans to forget about the world outside.Looking around the theatre, where every session usually sells out in double-quick time, was just as strange as events prior, too. This was the first grim reality of attending sport for the immediate future I became aware of: everything understandably takes more time.There was no testing, no temperature checks, but test and trace forms were at least filled out as we waited to enter the arena in dribs and drabs of four or five people at a time. But just to watch the players and the standard is just absolutely incredible.