1985: Steve Davis and the black ball final

So much has been written about that 1985 World Snooker Championship that it is tricky to find a different angle (pardon the pun). Dennis Taylor, the popular player from Northern Ireland winning the title for the first time, on the final black in the final frame, 18.5 million people watching on BBC2 as the clock ticked over to 12.23am. An iconic moment in the sport.

For days after the event, Taylor was understandably a man in demand. Yet it was hard to begrudge the very likeable Taylor his moment in the spotlight. Here was a man who had been a professional since 1972, the player with the upside-down glasses, who had come from 8-0 down in that final to topple the colossus of the game.

To the victor the spoils. But what about the role Davis played in the black ball final of 1985? A seemingly indestructible robot malfunctioned seriously during that deciding frame, portraying a vulnerable, almost human face that many of us didn’t think was possible. That 1985 defeat was a bitter pill to swallow.

Watching that final frame on YouTube is like leaping into a DeLorean, accelerating to 88mph, and taking a journey into the very definition of sporting theatre, appropriately located at the Crucible in Sheffield. You can almost smell the tension, as the two players sportingly shake hands before the final frame started at 11.15pm.

That final frame is littered with errors. However, it’s fair to say that under such intense pressure, you can cut the two men a bit of slack. The position of the balls also did not encourage break building, as a scrappy frame developed into a 68-minute slog. It was like watching two heavyweights wearily clinging on at the end of a 15-round brawl.

Davis was naturally rattled, which was an unusual sight. Missing a thin clip on a red and gifting Taylor five points; a terrible shot using the swan – “After playing that I deserved to lose it” – prompting a startled Ted Lowe to enquire: “My word, what’s he done?” as the murmurs in the crowd filled the suffocating air.

This miss on a simple blue as Lowe pointed out that “Nerves have now taken over” and another foul that gave Taylor a much needed six points. “That’s unbelievable,” Lowe commented, as Davis continued to struggle.

Davis did get amongst the balls, a break of 25 pushing him to the brink of glory. But running out of position on a crucial pink would prove costly. As Taylor edged closer, the match crawled to an end. Looking skywards and breathing heavily after he missed a difficult brown, Davis was going through hell.

It seemed inevitable that the match would come down to “the final frame, the final black” as Lowe eloquently put it. Davis allowed himself a smile as Taylor prayed to the trophy; soon his facial expression would change completely. All down to a missed black that would haunt Davis forevermore.

Nothing was easy at this point. Yet, it looked as if Davis had ridden the storm and that normal service would be resumed. Admittedly, that chance did involve cutting the black into a blind pocket. But the look on Taylor’s face as he left the opportunity told everyone all that they needed to know.

“The worst thing you can do with a shot like the one I’ve just missed is to hit it thick, and I think that was on my mind,” Davis explained as a few months later as he, Taylor and David Vine watched that final frame, the three-time champion going through a therapy session for all of us to see. Davis had never been behind in the match; shortly after his aberration – leading to Lowe’s fantastic and simplistic “No!” exclamation – he had been knocked off his perch.

If you ever want a glimpse at what sporting hurt looks like, then examine the aftermath of the 1985 World Snooker Championship final. Davis, white as a ghost, has completely gone, staring into the distance with glazed eyes, obviously wanting the ground to swallow him whole. And then he had a microphone shoved under his nose.

Many were critical of Davis’ reaction at the time. His one-word answers to Vine were perceived as slightly sulky and unnecessary. But it was clear to anyone that the last thing Davis wanted to do was to discuss what had just occurred. Suffering from Post-Traumatic Snooker Disorder, Simon Barnes questioned in the Times whether Davis would ever recover from the mental battering he had been through.

The public perception of Davis was an interesting topic at the best of times. A British world champion should be a celebrated figure, one that the large majority of sports fans get behind. But there was something about Davis that didn’t endear him to the British public.

An article in the Guardian shortly after the final attempted to discuss the issue. “On the morning after, reading only a centimetre between the lines, there was positive glee at his [Davis’] defeat. The question is why?”

“There are several simple answers, of course. Because Davis betrays no emotion, he commands no emotion. Because he has won everything several times, people want to see someone else win something. Because he is very rich and successful, he has become a target to shoot at.”

“What Steve Davis has had to put up with this week is something rather different: a kind of sadism, the fascination a crowd derives from watching, hour after endless hour, an almost metronomic façade of skill and instinctive confidence stripped to the bones of frailty. It has all – in this single respect – seemed a little sad and a little nasty.”

Speaking personally, there was a lot of truth in the Guardian article. As a 9-year-old boy from England, I wanted Taylor to win. I’d become bored of Davis winning repeatedly, and the underdog element Taylor provided was important. But you look back now, hopefully with a little more wisdom, and you can’t help but feel for Davis, as he goes through his traumatic experience in front of the watching world.

Every year since, Davis has had that scar picked at endlessly, often pointing out that he is remembered more for a match that he lost than the six world titles he won. And although he joked recently that he would break lockdown rules to avoid watching a repeat of the final, there can be no escaping the fact that the 1985 final was undoubtedly the zenith for the sport.

“I think the best moment of my career was missing the black against Dennis Taylor,” Davis stated during a press conference when he announced his retirement. “With Dennis, that was the best and worst moment of my career because I think it just showed how greatly snooker had been appreciated by the public.” It was no consolation to Davis, but that loss showed that he was human, and he could bleed like us mere mortals.

A year later we would have Snooker Loopy at number six in the charts, and Davis toppled by another underdog in a world final. But nothing could compare to 1985. I’m not sure anything ever will in snooker. Even Steve Davis acknowledged this, even if it did take him 31 years to admit it.