# Talk:Joe Johnson (snooker player)

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The old infobox listed the name as "John Johnson", although neither the text nor the title suggests this is his name. Was that a typo, or is his real name "John", but everyone calls him "Joe"? I used "Joe Johnson" in the new box. Abigail 20:18, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

My typo, I think. --Auximines 08:00, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

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Hello, there appears to be different season formats in the article, would be good to standardise. Uses 2020–01, 2020–2021, 2020/21 and 2020/2021 formats at different points in article - I would go with the 2020–01 format as per football articles, but may be different for snooker. Keith D (talk) 18:43, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

I've made some edits, so hopefully there is consistency in the body text. The table headings and notes are standard in these articles (which doesn't mean they can't be changed). Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 00:49, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

I was going to post these on the FAC, but it's been withdrawn, so I might as well post them here in case they're useful.

The "losing to" parentheses in the first paragraph of the lead are a little distracting.  I think they can be justified for the finals, but I would suggest dropping the one for the semi-final, and both the parenthetical comments in the third paragraph of the lead.  I would lead in the mention of Dennis Taylor since in a way the first-round loss is more notable than the semi-final losses.
"who later taught his stepson snooker, when Johnson was four": "later" is redundant with "when Johnson was four".
I started reading through the "Professional career" section, and then decided to go and read some other snooker FAs to see how they handle run-of-the-mill tournament reporting.  I looked at Terry Griffiths, John Pulman, and Cliff Thorburn, and generally those articles only give round-by-round results when there's something interesting to say about the tournament.  For example, in Terry Griffiths, the account of the 1979 World Championship gives all the details because it's his first tournament (and championship) win.  For the 1979 Canadian Open Griffith's article only says he lost in the final.  The extended discussion of his loss at the 1980 World Championship is interesting because it's the first example of the Crucible curse.  In Johnson's article, most of the "Early years" descriptions have no particular interest; it's simply a listing of wins and whatever loss ended his tournament.  I think these descriptions should be much abbreviated: the reader can click through to the individual tournament articles if they want to know the round-by-round information.  By contrast I think the account you give of Johnson defeating Davis in 1986 is fine; more detail is justified for the most important win of Johnson's career, and there are interesting factoids distributed through the account.  (Though I don't think you need to say who he lost to at the 1985 Matchroom Trophy or1986 Mercantile Credit Classic.)  Skimming the tournament descriptions later in the article, those look OK -- I think it's just the "Early years" section  and to a lesser degree the "1982-1985" section that need attention.
"Once again his opponent in the final was Davis, who defeated him."  Suggest cutting "who defeated him"; the whole next paragraph gives that information.
"outside the top 16 after five years in that group": suggest "for the first time in five years".
"Johnson had heart and eye problems during the 1990s, although he continued to play in qualifying events." Why say "qualifying events"?  It sounds from the surrounding narrative as if he continued to play in tournaments generally.
-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 12:59, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this, Mike Christie. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:26, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Comments FAO User:BennyOnTheLoose

Too many Johnsons throughout, where pronoun "he" could be used – I can remedy this in my copyedit.
I tend to think it's best to give a player's name in full the first time it appears in a new section, then just surname if it appears again in same section. Again, I can incorporate changes in my copyedit if you agree. This applies to Tony Knowles (x3), Terry Griffiths (x3), Cliff Wilson (x3), Cliff Thorburn, Steve Davis (x2), Stephen Hendry, Jimmy White, Tony Meo (x3), Mike Hallett (x3), Kirk Stevens, Ian Williamson, Bill Werbeniuk, Ray Edmonds, Murdo MacLeod, Graham Miles, John Spencer and Warren King. Strangely, Eddie Charlton, Matt Gibson, Willie Thorne are inconsistent with this.
Sounds good to me. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Lead
Would it be better to link English to English people rather than the country England?
I think this is an MOS:OVERLINK actually ("major examples of the following categories should generally not be linked: Countries (e.g., Brazil/Brazilian..") BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
"snooker commentator for Eurosport" – do we need to mention Eurosport here? It might also appear that he was a "snooker player and snooker commentator" for Eurosport, so there's a semantics issue here.
No and it should be clearer that former professional player but current commentator. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Do we need to mention who he lost to in the first paragraph? It sort of detracts from the subject of the article (Joe!).
Makes sense to change it. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Need to link ranking final at first mention.
Early life and amateur career
"His mother was named Margaret, and his father" may be better as "His mother's name was Margaret, and his father"
Second sentence sounds a bit awkward – maybe try this... "Margaret's second husband was Ken Johnson, who taught his stepson Joe how to play snooker from the age of four."
Amended per the two points above.
Was Margaret married to Farooq or were they just in a relationship? If the latter, we can't say "second husband".
Amended.
It might be more informative to link TUC, i.e. at the TUC Club in Middlesbrough
Could link motor mechanic.
Amended per the two points above.
Early years
"by 9 frames to 3" is inconsistent with other scorelines, so it would be best as "Johnson lost his opening match at the 1979 UK Championship to Bill Werbeniuk, 3–9."
Amended.
1985–86 season: World champion
Suggested wording change: "Johnson had also never won a match at the Crucible Theatre, and was rated a 150–1 outsider" > "Having never won a match at the Crucible Theatre, Johnson was rated a 150–1 outsider..."
"where he lost 4–5 to Thorburn" should probably also be in brackets to match previous aside about Neal Foulds.
bookmakers' odds of 2/9 and 5/1 are inconsistent with 150–1 style used previously.
Amended per the three points above.
Are you referring to Gordon Burn's book Pocket Money? Should probably state that.
Yes, it is mentioned in the 1986 edition. so I added in that year, but the page ref is to the 2008 edition. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Post-World Championship win
"hoping merely" > "simply hoping" ?
"the teenaged Stephen Hendry" > "the 18-year-old Stephen Hendry" might be clearer, more specific, if the source allows it.
Amended per the two points above.
Later career
"after five years in that group" sounds a bit odd, maybe change to "for the first time in five years"
Suggested wording change: "won a four-player round-robin event, the 1991 Nescafe Extra Challenge" > "won the 1991 Nescafe Extra Challenge, which was a ..."
Suggested wording change: "Johnson had heart and eye problems during the 1990s, although he continued to play" > "Despite having heart and eye problems during the 1990s, Johnson continued to play..."
Amended per the three points above.
"in February 2004" – surely this should be "in April 2004" !?
Amended to mention that it was the qualifying competition.
"the oldest player on the professional snooker circuit" – are we talking about the oldest ever or just the oldest at that point?
Oldest active professional at that point. Fred Davis was older (79, I think) when he retired from snooker.
Seniors events
This subsection shouldn't be inside Professional career section because it was after he retired.
Suggested wording change: "(which was used to determine the winner if each player won one of two frames)" > "used as a tiebreaker in the event of each player winning one of two frames" (and doesn't need to be in brackets).
Amended per the two points above.
Legacy
Again, this shouldn't be inside Professional career section because it was after he retired. Maybe combine Seniors events and Legacy subsections into "Post-retirement" or similar?
Pending; will see if "Legacy" can be expanded.
State that Everton's 2012 book is called Black Farce and Cue Ball Wizards.
Suggested wording change: "He found the pressures of World Championship fame difficult, and was" > "Johnson found it difficult to deal with the pressures of WC fame, and he was..."
What do you mean by 'poorly served'?
Not enough detail to clarify this, so I removed it.
Suggested wording change: that "it will be for ... remembered". > "that Johnson would always be remembered for "his shot-making, ... that defined his career."
"In their book about world champions" > "In their 2005 book about snooker world champions"
amended per the two points above.
Bibliography
I think Everton was editor (not author) of "Snooker: The Records".
No other authors are listed, and lots of the text is re-used from Snooker Scene and Everton's other books, as is common for his output. I had never noticed before today, but on one of the front pages there is actually a credit for "Editor: Beatrice Frei". The book is copyrighted to Everton and Guiness Superlatives. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Rodney Baggins (talk) 18:15, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, Rodney Baggins. I'm happy with all of the suggestions. I'll start with the items where I need to refer back to sources. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose: Hi there, I've had a good go at this and just about ready to hand over to you. Here are some comments for you to consider.

Early years: "he defeated Steve Baruda 5–4 after making a 100 break in the first frame" (say that this was in the fifth round?)
Added a source that says it was the sixth round. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:44, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
1985–86 season: World champion: "Davis was considered highly likely to win the title, as reflected in the bookmakers' odds of 2‍–‍9 for Davis and 5‍–‍1 for Johnson." (unsourced sentence)
Added a ref. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:44, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
Post-World Championship win: states that he was eliminated before the televised stage in every major tournament (except one) — which one?
Slightly reworded this as otherwise it would have needed several references. Anyway, I think that mentioning the furtherst round reached rather then whether or not it was televised is probably more relevant. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:10, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
The whole of para 2 is covered by one source — any alternatives to throw in?
Added a coule of sources with clippings. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:47, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
Later career: Please check WSC qualifying was in February 2004 (I'd expect it to have been in April 2004)
Yes it was, see The Guardian report from 12 Feb 2004 (the match is also mentioned in the Daily Telegraph on the same date). BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:47, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
"He played his last match as a professional later that month" — Qualifying for 2004 Players Championship was in March not Feb!?
Ah yes, the Snooker Scene article uses "this month" in the article talking about the World Championship qualifying and I must have got confused. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:47, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
"as the oldest player on the professional snooker circuit at the time" — this is ambiguous. Was he the oldest ever player at the time, or does he still hold the record of being the oldest to have ever remained on the tour? Maybe reword to: "as the oldest player ever to remain on the professional snooker circuit"?
Not oldest ever (Fred Davis AFAIK). I've reworded but I'm sure you can improve on my attempt. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:47, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
I don't like the three short top-level sections at the end: Seniors events / Legacy / Other activities. There must be some way of combining or reordering to present things better? I'm having a think about it!! First of all, I think the Legacy section needs to be either expanded or cut out altogether (he's not dead yet!) The third-party comments could be incorporated some other way rather than in a premature Legacy section. Also, the last para of 1985–86 season: World champion should really be moved out and put with the other info lower down.
I took some action on these but feel free to revert it. I've got hold of a few more books recently so let me see if there's more to add under what I've retitled Reputation. Yes, there must be a better heading than "Other activities". BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 00:06, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
Would it be possible for you to get more clippings? Times refs. 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 68. Also Toronto Star (ref.42), Daily Telegraph (ref.119), Birmingham Evening Mail (ref.122)
It's not possible to add clippings for The Times from The Times Digital Archive, and it's not on Newspapers.com; I swapped a couple of those out. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 00:06, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
One very notable thing about Johnson (IMO) is that he's come closer to breaking the Crucible Curse than any other player. Should that not be added somewhere? It's mentioned in this Seniors Snooker source (ref.2) but it's not very well worded, and I thought you might have better evidence in one of your books maybe?
Hendon's 2009 article in Snooker Scene mentions this. As there are so few books from the last few years, that site might be the best source, but I'll check. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 00:06, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
Ronnie O'Sullivan: "the Crucible Curse... [explanation]... Joe was the one who looked most like doing it. Ken Doherty's the only other man to make the world final the year after first winning it, and he never got as close in 1998 as Joe did in 1987." (O'Sullivan 2023 p.29 ) (O'Sullivan also wrote "Joe Johnson was my first Sheffield crush" (p.260)) BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 11:24, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
TNT 16 May 2024: "the closest any player came to pulling off the feat since the Crucible first staged the competition in 1977 is Eurosport pundit Joe Johnson," BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:43, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
By the way, I must apologise for taking so long to get round to this. You asked me about it before Christmas and I've been sitting on my hands for ages, sorry.  All the best for now. Rodney Baggins .talk. 09:53, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

It was worth the wait! BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 00:06, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
@Rodney Baggins: I added a bit of background about TV coverage and the popularity of snooker. Trim this if you feel like it. There is some infobox info not mentioned in the text - highest ranking, and nickname. I'll have to do something to the Performance and rankings timeline table for accessibility: I think my least-disliked option so far is like the ones at Alex Higgins, which have only one row per tournament, whether it was ranking or not, with some visible comments like "(Ranking from 1989)". Let me know what you think about the tables. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:42, 10 March 2025 (UTC)
@BennyOnTheLoose: Hi there, I've done a bit more work on this and I think it's looking somewhat better now. What do you think about the Crucible curse addition? Here are a few things for you to chew over...
I'm still not entirely happy about the "Reputation" section. It might appear to be just a list of disjointed observations by various commentators. Still not sure about the title either. I thought of "Reputation and popularity" but that might be editorial bias, as if we were characterising him as "popular" and planting that seed in the reader's mind?
How about moving the first para content (or what's worth keeping of it) into the 1986 World Champion/Post-World Championship win sections? Perhaps the other two paras are more easily defined - not quite "Playing style and accolades" but something along those lines? BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 17:40, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
I made some changes. Perhaps if we can't do better we can see what FAC reviewers have to say? BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:37, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Ref.25 has a lot of tags! (Hayton & Dee 2004, pp. 571–574) Would it be possible for you to break it up into smaller chunks? (maybe focus in on p571, p572, p573, p574)?
Done. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 17:40, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Why did you convert the ref titles to title case in this edit? We should be avoiding unnecessary capitalisation per MOS:CAPS and here you have forced the issue.
I often use that script - I believe it follows MOS:TITLECAPS, but I never claim to be an MOS guru so can go through and change them, as long as we have consistency. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:56, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
I've made a few minor cite fixes. Note a couple of others: Ref 5. says p.348 not p.112, Ref 43. says p.13 not F2, not sure where you got those from. Also, I believe The Daily Telegraph is known online and elsewhere as just The Telegraph (affects ref.112).
If you click view to see the full page on ref 5 you can see it's actually numbered 112. Similarly with ref 43.  I amended 112. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:56, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Are The Times refs not clippable? (refs 42, 44, 50, 98)
No, I access them via The Times Digital Archive and that can't be linked to. If you've seen any articles where older Times articles are linked, please point me to it. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:56, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
You might want to pick up archives for the other Newspapers.com sources. (refs 40, 41, 43, 45, 56, 61, 62, 79, 140, 143) I tried and failed!
Looking at Wikipedia_talk:Featured_list_candidates#Question,_re:_Internet_Archive (althogh thats FLCs rather than FACs) I think it is probably acceptable not to archive Nespapers.com sources. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:37, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I've not thought too much about the Performance and rankings timeline table. Maybe that's more of a cross-project issue because we could do with having consistency for all players. I do think that the tournament column entries shouldn't be allowed to wrap too much. Another thing I've picked up on is: surely NR just means "non ranking" rather than "no longer a ranking event" as it may never have been a ranking event in the first place?
This has been an occasional topic, without much happening about it, at WT:SNOOKER. See "Revival topic: the performance and rankings timeline" from last year for example. I think part of the issue is that we are trying to show all sorts of info that is about tournament histories rather the player specifically, and I really dislike tournaments which clearly are the same one appearing in different rows. As I mentioned, my least-disliked so far is at Alex Higgins. One option is to simply split it into several tables for accessibility (e.g. John Spencer (snooker player)). I'm assuming the issue of accessiblity (WP:DTT and MOS:ACCESS) will be picked up, although some snooker bios sneaked through the FAC process without accessible tables. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:56, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
In the meantime... I have to say I'm getting très excited about the world championship starting in a few weeks' time. Do you think Kyren might be the one to break the curse? I do hope so!!  P.S. I am intending to do a GA review of Tessa Davidson for you shortly. Rodney Baggins .talk. 12:41, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Yes, I think Kyren could do it, he's had a great season and Trump never seems to do as well as he should over longer matches. It was my first time at the Crucible last year. I saw a couple of the early matches and hung around and got selfies with Davis, Hendry, Higgins, Bingham, White, Murphy, Wilson and others. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:56, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
OK, Rodney Baggins, let me know what else you think is required before we put in the nomination. Thanks! Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:57, 16 April 2025 (UTC)