Quinten Hann
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| Quinten Hann | |
|---|---|
| |
| Personal Information | |
| Date of birth | June 4, 1977 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Career | |
| Professional | 1995—2006 |
| 2005/6 World Ranking | 22 |
| Best World Ranking | 14 (2002—2004) |
| World Championship Best | Last 16 (2003) |
| Highest Break | 142 (1997) |
Quinten Hann (born June 4, 1977) is former Australian professional snooker player. Prior to his retirement in February 2006, Hann was one of the more temperamental players on the snooker circuit, sometimes letting his frustration at poor play get the better of him. He has been known to break off by smashing into the pack of reds.
Snooker career
Hann was ranked in the top 16 for two seasons. He has reached the quarter-finals of four ranking tournaments.
He missed several ranking events after breaking his wrist and collar bone whilst motorcycle racing in 1999. He also broke his foot in a parachute jump in 2001, and was forced to play shoeless in the UK Championship.
More recently, in the 2004 World championships, he was rebuked for making threatening comments to Andy Hicks when he lost 10–4 to the unseeded outsider, and Hicks commented that the result would put Hann outside the top 16 (which it did). Following the acrimony over this defeat Hann challenged Hicks to a fight. In the event fellow snooker player Mark King stood in for Hicks at a charity boxing match with Hann which the latter won.
In the 2005 World Championship Hann was forced to play with a new cue after his original cue was lost after the China Open earlier that year. The original cue was eventually retrieved just before the World Championship but was found to be damaged and was therefore not useable.
Having borrowed a friend's cue, he decided against practising, and instead went out drinking. He played his first round match against Peter Ebdon hungover, and rather predictably lost the match by 10 frames to 2.
When asked about the defeat to Ebdon, Hann said: "I played poorly, but to be honest, that wasn't because of the cue. I was planning to go out the night before the match, drink a couple of beers. When I found out my cue was missing, a couple of beers became a lot of beers." The fact that the first session was a morning session obviously didn't help.
Departure from snooker
Hann is known in snooker for his "bad-boy" image, and in 2002 he was tried in the UK for allegedly raping a woman while both were intoxicated, but was acquitted.[1]
Hann effectively called time on his snooker career on Tuesday 14th February when he resigned from the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. He did not appear on the circuit during 2005/2006.
A few days after retiring from the game, a hearing at the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association was convened, and Hann faced accusations of attempting to fix the result of a match.
The hearing came after The Sun newspaper alleged that Hann had agreed to lose his opening match against Ken Doherty at the China Open in return for large amounts of money. The WPBSA panel was shown transcripts and video and audio footage of the meetings which took place between Hann and the undercover Sun journalists in March and April 2005.
Hann was found guilty. The newspaper did not go through with any agreement, but by agreeing to lose the game Hann was in breach of rule 2.8, which states "a member shall not directly or indirectly solicit, attempt to solicit or accept any payment or any form of remuneration of benefit in exchange for influencing the outcome of any game of snooker or billiards."
Hann was banned from snooker for 8 years and also fined £10,000. It is unlikely that he will ever play professional snooker again.
There is a feeling that, with a little more discipline, Hann could have established himself as a top snooker player. Now it appears that his talent will never reach its full potential.