Joe Perry landed a ‘special’ Seniors British Open title on Sunday just a few months after retiring from the professional game due to falling out of love with the game.
The Gentleman beat Jimmy White 7-5 in a cracking final in Derby after downing Stuart Bingham and Matthew Stevens on his way to the showpiece.
A former world number eight and two-time ranking event winner, it was the 51-year-old’s first Seniors glory, and while it was not quite the same as glory on the main tour, lifting the trophy was still a special moment.
‘It was different, it was, but winning is winning. Winning feels great,’ Perry told Metro. ‘It still feels special. You go there and you’re the last man standing and you get all the accolades at the end and it’s brilliant.
‘Afterwards you get you realise just how important these things are. My phone’s never never been so popular. The lady that runs our social media at the club (Joe Perry’s Snooker and Pool Palace), she put a little thing on there saying thank you to people that supported me it had well over 100,000 views. So it spreads far and wide, this sort of thing.’
Perry didn’t turn up in Derby with sights firmly set on the trophy, in fact he had barely picked up his cue before turning in three good performances.
‘I’ll be honest, I hardly play snooker at all now,’ he said. ‘If I play I just have a few frames with a few guys in the club, but there’s no one really of any standard. Head starts range from 50 to 100. I’ll just play a few frames now and then and that’s it really.
‘I did have full intentions of playing the week before this tournament, but I’ve only got three tables in my club and they’ve been booked out all day every day over the school holidays. So I didn’t really get a chance to play!’
The former Welsh Open champ was pleased with his performances given the lack of practice, but did admit conditions were helpful.
‘I played well,’ he said. ‘There’s no getting away from that the pockets are a little bit too generous. That helps with a few that really I missed and still went in, but in general I played as well as I could have really hoped to play.
‘And playing Jimmy was the cake. He was the first one to come and do an exhibition at my club and he’s so popular. To play Jimmy in the final of a Seniors event, you can’t really ask for much more than that.’
Perry fell off the professional tour at the end of last season having turned pro in 1992 alongside the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins and Mark Williams.
‘It’s just how snooker used to be’
His title-winning form in the Seniors is not giving him the urge to return to the pro ranks though.
‘No. No, not at all,’ he said. ‘But I’ll continue to play in the Seniors as long as Jason [Francis, World Seniors chairman] continues to invite me.
‘He does a fantastic job. It’s so good, it’s so well run. It’s different in that it’s sort of like a glorified sort of exhibition, really, with all the old faces there. It’s very relaxed backstage. It’s good fun.
‘It’s just how snooker used to be, for me. The players’ lounges are full of people that are happy to be there. They’re not stressing about ranking points and losing their tour cards. It’s just a really nice environment to be involved in.’
That stressful environment Perry describes became the norm for him in the final couple of years of his professional career as he lost form and slipped down the rankings.
‘It just became very, very boring’
The unpleasant grind of qualifiers became much more common than the more glamorous televised events and he lost his love for the sport.
‘I did stop enjoying playing snooker,’ he said. ‘I stopped enjoying turning up at events.
‘I used to…I don’t know what other players thought…but I always felt I was quite involved in and around tournaments, I was in the players’ lounge or trying to make the place a jolly atmosphere and get involved with everything.
‘But it just became very, very boring. It was like a doctor’s waiting room, just people sitting there on their own waiting for their names to be called out and it was very, very boring.
‘That’s all well and good if you’re young and keen and all you really care about is going out there and playing and climbing the rankings. But when you get to our age, I think you need a little bit more than that and I just really stopped enjoying it. It was becoming a chore to turn up at qualifying venues.
‘Obviously that snowballs into what you do in between tournaments. You don’t have the hunger and desire to practice hard because you’re not really looking forward to going there anyway.’
Perry is very much enjoying himself on the coaching side of the sport now, working closely with long-time friend and practice partner Neil Robertson.
He’s an incredible player, his work ethic is brilliant.
Things are going well, with the Australian third in the world rankings, and while they are together he will be Perry’s only client, but that’s not to say that won’t change in the future.
‘While I’m with Neil, it’s just exclusive to Neil,’ he said. ‘But if and when that comes to an end, then it’s something I would like enjoy to do with other players.
‘Just passing on a bit of our knowledge. I know there’s a few players doing it. Fergal [O’Brien], Anthony Hamilton, [Peter] Ebdon, obviously. It’s something I would continue doing.
‘But all the time I’m with Neil, it’s just exclusive to Neil and I’m really enjoying that, it’s hard not to enjoy it. He’s an incredible player, his work ethic is brilliant.
‘I’m learning from him as well, the other day when I was playing those final frames, thinking about some of the stuff that we’ve talked about and he said to me how he thinks towards the end of tournaments. So we’re still learning as we go.’
Something he has learned is that the old cliché of watching being more stressful than playing is true.
‘I didn’t expect to be like this, really,’ he said. ‘My dad, especially has always said it’s much harder to watch. And you’re like, “yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Of course it is.” And and it is!
‘When I was watching Neil clear up to beat Ronnie in Saudi, I can honestly say, I had the same similar sort of nerves to when I was clearing up to win one of my ranking events, but you can’t do anything about it. So it’s definitely true. It’s definitely worse watching.’
Those nerves are put to the test in an unusual way when Perry is commentating on Robertson’s matches, as he was at the UK Championship, where the Thunder reached the semi-finals.
‘Obviously if anyone else is playing you’re just totally impartial, but I suppose that’s the challenge when I obviously want Neil to win now,’ he said.
‘So you’ve got to try and stop that from becoming too apparent when you’re commentating on the match. I don’t know if I do okay with it or not, but I try to, I try to be impartial as much as I can.’
With his club, working with Robertson and media work, Perry is still very busy in snooker, also signing up to be on the players’ board of the Professional Snooker Players’ Association (PSPA).
‘I think there’s a big conversation to be had there’
While he has not been heavily involved since the PSPA was set up last year, there are things he wants the organisation to achieve.
‘I just feel that players need more of a voice, more of a say,’ he explained. ‘I hope that it doesn’t get really political or nasty and I hope it doesn’t ever come to players boycotting events or anything like that.
‘I hope it’s just players getting a bit more more control over what they’re asked to do. I think that’s all we’ve ever wanted, because looking from the outside in, I think the tour is an incredible shape now.’
Perry, as the innocent opponent in a 4-0 win, was involved in the investigation which saw Mark King banned for match-fixing for their 2023 Welsh Open game.
The investigation took 20 months to conclude, with King eventually banned for five years in 2023, and Perry felt the stress of being wrapped up in that investigation accelerated his retirement. As such, the disciplinary process is something he would like to see improved.
‘There’s a few things,’ he said. ‘First hand from my point of view, I didn’t like the way the disciplinary takes place. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement where that’s concerned.
‘Obviously retirement inevitably would have come at some stage, but no one’s ever going to convince me that it wasn’t accelerated due to what I was put through at that time.’
On other changes he would like to see, he added: ‘I think the way the tour is structured, I know that hands are tied a lot of the time, but the travelling the guys have to do and the way they set the calendar up, I think that could be improved.
‘Again it’s hard to complain when they’re playing these big events, earning so much money. But it’s just trying to make things better.
‘The other thing that has always been a burning issue for me and a lot of the players is a points ranking system. I think there’s a big conversation to be had there.
‘Obviously Neil’s a major beneficiary of it this season, but I think it’s an issue where you can win one event and it really propels you up the rankings. You can win an event that’s just as difficult to win and not make anything like as much progress.
‘I think that’s a conversation that definitely needs to be had and I think there’s some room for manoeuvre there. But like I say, all in all, I think the tour’s fantastic now. It’s a great time to be be a top snooker player. I know that.’