Sporting Bygones: Years of world domination are now only a hazy memory as ‘The Nugget’ prefers to focus on playing the game he loves

People always say you remember your first time. For snooker legend Steve Davis, he struggles to remember his first, second, third, fourth, fifth or even his sixth world title success.
Steve Davis.Steve Davis.
Steve Davis.

The last time the 55-year-old won the World Championship at the Crucible was 1989, just weeks after the Hillsborough disaster, with Sheffield a city in mourning.

That saw ‘The Nugget’ beat John Parrott 18-3 in the heaviest defeat the Crucible has ever witnessed in a final.

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The man whom Davis beat in the semi-finals, a certain Stephen Hendry, would go on to dominate the sport in the Nineties – just like Davis had done in the Eighties – and even go one better by collecting seven Crucible titles.

But it was Davis who transformed the sport, leading the way as colour television transformed snooker’s popularity in Britain.

Yet, ask the Essex cueman for his recollections of those halcyon days and Davis has few memories of the actual games.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of his memorable final win over Cliff Thorburn – the Canadian had earlier scored the first 147 maximum break at the Crucible.

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But Davis told the Yorkshire Post: “It’s very difficult to remember what happened in the final, I struggle to remember what happened last week.

“I don’t really go back and look over my old games, now and then I see a clip, sometimes in the TV studios they show old matches between sessions and intervals.

“That seems like another world away. Another era, I don’t even really think about it.

“I would imagine I am just like everyone else, you can’t remember that far ago what it was like. I can’t even put myself in my own shoes to think what I was like as a person.

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“It’s a bit like looking at your old school diaries. A mate of mine kept a five-year diary, he showed it to me. It’s embarrassing what was in there, you think ‘I don’t remember that’.

“It’s a bit like that. If you could be a fly on the wall 30 years ago looking at yourself, you would probably be cringing.

“Whatever it might be, you think surely I didn’t do that, surely I didn’t say that. Whatever happened to that brown suit?

“All I can say, it is lovely to have been part of the history of the game.”

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Davis made his World Championship debut in 1979 – he lost to Dennis Taylor in the first round – and six years later the pair would meet again in arguably the greatest final of all time. Davis opened an 8-0 lead, Taylor battled back to trail 9-7 and then 17-15.

Irishman Taylor levelled the match at 17-17 to force a nervy deciding frame where he won, although it went right down to the black ball.

Over 18 million tuned into the BBC to witness the drama unfold.

Davis’s first Crucible title came in 1981. The Romford potter was seeded 15th, but his reputation was growing and he beat heavyweights Jimmy White, Alex Higgins Terry Griffiths and Thorburn on his way to a showdown with Doug Mountjoy in the final.

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Davis won 18-12 but fell to the Crucible curse of failing to defend his first title 12 months later by crashing to a 10-1 defeat to Tony Knowles.

White, a fans’ favourite but never a Crucible champion, lost 18-16 in the 1984 final, before the drama of that “black ball final”.

Bradford’s Joe Johnson would prove to be Davis’s foe in 1986 and 1987, with differing outcomes. The 150-1 Yorkshireman shocked the world by winning 18-12, but Davis claimed revenge 12 months later with a 18-14 success.

His fifth world title came against Terry Griffiths in 1988, winning 10 out of 13 frames to clinch an 18-11 win.

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Then came his final glory in 1989, as Parrott was swept away. Twenty-four years later, Davis is still going strong and enjoying his snooker. Ranked 48th in the world, he has to battle through qualifiers but has no intention of retiring from a sport which has been his life since he picked up a cue as a 12-year-old.