Perrie Mans 48

Perrie Mans - Snooker Kings Sticker Card

On 10th March 2019 the snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan made his 1,000th break of 100 or higher in tournament play. From his debut season in 1992 there have been six seasons in which O’Sullivan has recorded at least 50 centuries with a career high of 74 in 2017/18.

These figures represent the latest escalation in a startling scoring arms race that has been going on since Joe Davis helped establish the professional game in the 1930s. Figures for dominant players in past eras dramatically make the point:

The statistics from Cuetracker are partial as scores in some matches were not recorded and the total number of centuries may be under-estimated (likely by a factor of 2 or 3 for Joe Davis) but the trend is clear. Ray Reardon probably made less century breaks in his entire career than Ronnie O’Sullivan did in a single season.

The South African Perrie Mans (active 1945-97) was defeated by Ray Reardon in the final of the 1978 World Championship and reached number 2 in the world rankings that year. He won the South African Professional Championship 19 times. He was noted at the time as being an outstanding single-ball potter but his statistics suggest that description may have been partly euphemistic; only a single century break is recorded for his career on Cuetracker and it seems probable that he made less than 10 in total.

In the 1979 Benson and Hedges Masters he beat Alex Higgins in the final (having defeated Cliff Thorburn and Ray Reardon en route) and remarkably his highest break in the entire tournament was only 48 - something unimaginable for a tournament today. The reason for this scoring nadir is likely to have been a combination of less reliable equipment and his grindingly defensive and conservative approach to play which, for the spectators, must have only partially been offset by his penchant for raffish multi-hued waistcoats.