The sausage competition is no more as Chris Wakelin says he was only poking fun at Kyren Wilson and Shaun Murphy rather than initiating any pork-based beef.
An incredibly confusing sentence to the uninitiated, but Wakelin sparked some controversy by labelling the debate over who is the best rest player as a ‘sausage competition’.
Wilson and Murphy tend to be the two vying for who is the best with the rest, but Wakelin suggested it was a pointless debate.
He told Metro: ‘I think it’s quite pathetic, to be honest. It’s all a bit of a sausage competition, shall we say. I think the pair of them need to just grow up and find something else to talk about.
Wilson wasn’t too pleased with the comments, saying to Metro: ‘I don’t know in what context or sense Chris has been talking about me and Shaun, but the thing that Chris needs to be careful of is sometimes when people read things, it can be taken in a totally different context compared to how you would say it to somebody in person.
‘I know Chris is kind of naïve and new to all of this, he’s not been at the top of the game for very long and he’s probably in a position where he’s quite inexperienced with stuff like this.
‘I’ve had my fingers burnt saying some things and I’m quite aware of sometimes when you put stuff out there, you’ve got to be careful with how it can be taken in the media.
‘So I think he needs to just maybe take a little step back and just be careful in some of the things he’s saying because it doesn’t come across well.’
The unlikely feud got some attention, but Wakelin put an end to it by speaking to Wilson and wife Sophie, explaining that the Warrior had indeed not taken the comments as they were meant.
‘I’ve spoken with the Wilsons about it and it was purely just said in jest,’ Wakelin told Metro. ‘To be fair, the reason that I thought Kyren would take it in jest is because we used to practise together a hell of a lot back in the day, like more often than not every single week for a good five or ten years and my rest play back then was so bad that we used to be in fits of laughter.
‘He’d be there pumping reds in with the rest and dancing the white around the table. And there’s me trying to screw the white back a couple of feet and I give it absolute death, like as hard as I possibly can, and the white’s stopped dead, it didn’t come back at all, and we’re both just rolling around the floor laughing. I can’t screw back with the rest!
‘That was the sort of thing that I thought Kyren would bring up in his response. I was quite surprised how seriously he took it, but we’ve spoke about it since. And I spoke to Phil Seymour from Shaun Murphy’s onefourseven podcast and we had a laugh about it as well.
‘It wasn’t meant to be derogatory. It was never an attack. I couldn’t think of the words at the time, so a sausage competition was a way of not getting myself a fine.
‘But yeah, it was funny when I said it. It was funny when I read it and it was even funnier when I read his response.’
While Wakelin has no lust for a feud, he is happy to let the sausage theme run on.
‘I was disappointed that Shaun didn’t win the tournament in Xi’an last week because I was going to send him a lovely pound of Cumberlands!’ Wakelin said.
On a more serious note, both Wilson and Wakelin pointed out that they shared a personal conversation earlier this season on how hard it is to be away from your family on tour.
At the Shanghai Masters, Wakelin was away from his young daughter and appreciated the words of the Wilsons.
‘Kyren and I, he alluded to this, we spoke in Shanghai about the difficulties of being a parent, with all the travelling and we had a real heart to heart,’ he said. ‘And his wife, Sophie, was really lovely and supportive with me because that was one of my first trips away since our daughter was born.
‘So it was lovely for them to help me out and of course, the rest thing was never meant as anything other than a bit of fun, a bit of a laugh and a joke.
‘We’ve spoken about it now. Hopefully the sausage competition can be laid to rest.’