And this is the nub of it: history.
Alex Higgins and baby daughter Lauren in 1982. Dennis Taylor wagging his finger in ’85. Ronnie O’Sullivan’s five-minute maximum. White the exasperated nearly man. The dominant Davis and Stephen Hendry decades.
Rob Maul covers snooker for the Sun and Shane McDermott has been a mainstay of the media room for the Mirror.
As Maul says: “You can’t ignore the history. It’s a pilgrimage I’ve done since 2018 and I feel honoured to do it, but there are people in that building who have done it for decades and decades and decades.
“That’s the unique thing about snooker: they’ve kept the Hendrys in the sport, and they’re still working. John Parrott’s commentating. And that legacy is something you don’t throw away lightly.
“When you walk around the city, you see Steve Davis, and Jimmy White will come by if he’s working. And so much has changed in other sports, but snooker’s fundamentally the same game that these legends were playing.”
McDermott says: “You see the same faces year on year, people who have been coming every year since 1977. Sadly some of them are coming less and less because of age.
“I can remember after matches perhaps nipping out of the press room for a minute and bumping into John Virgo as he left the commentary box. You’d have a little nod and say hello. That’s one thing everyone will miss this year.”
Faces in the crowd, faces in the commentary box, faces at the table. Here one year, gone the next.
In recent times, snooker has lost Virgo, Ray Reardon, Willie Thorne and Terry Griffiths, among others. Broadcaster and journalist Clive Everton and Bafta-nominated former snooker executive producer Nick Hunter have left us too.
The booming voice and laughter of Thorne, the gentle humour of Griffiths, the wisdom of Everton, the dry wit of Virgo.
They were part of the fixtures and fittings.
And in their own particular ways, they each played a telling role in the Crucible becoming what it was never built to be: snooker’s home.
