Spot On Snooker and Pool Club, Sheffield

Can anyone help our friend, World Disability Snooker phenomenon, Matthew "Doncaster Destroyer" Lester?

Donate to Sofia so good.... Help me play in the European Championship, organized by Matthew Lester My name is Matthew Lester, I am a 37 year old from Doncaste… Matthew Lester needs your support for Sofia so good.... Help me play in the European Championship

80 today and still looking after our rack cues and rests. While the cue balls are screaming Don't Pot Me Now, can you think of other Queen puns for snooker, pool or darts? Best one gets a free hour at Spot On Snooker and Pool Club, Sheffield

Book your Christmas Party at Sheffield's World Famous Spot On Snooker and Pool Club this year! Get in touch to make arrangements..

When a customer comes in and says they made this for the club 😍😍 Thank you so much - we love it on the wall. "No work, all play".

Still waiting on the James Tattersall and Moore match but let's get the quarter finals kicked off. Remember to book ahead, start from your handicap, lower handicap chooses the table, and loser pays for the table. Good luck everyone!

British Open is on and for those of you watching in black and white, the vintage TV is on in Vintage Corner. Get yourself down.

It's fast becoming a tourist destination! Keep it as is or finish it???

Well... that was an interesting week. 😂🎱

A week ago we had a big mural being worked on at the back of Spot On Snooker and Pool Club, Sheffield.

Now we’ve had the BBC, BBC Sport, Sky Sports, The Guardian, The Independent, The Star, Sheffield, and many other newspapers, overseas news sites, Reddit threads and apparently half the internet debating exactly what version of Ronnie O’Sullivan we’ve had painted.

So that escalated slightly!

We’ve had Zombie Ronnie. Thriller Ronnie. Horror-film Ronnie, and a few comparisons we can’t repeat on Facebook.

And, to be fair, some of the comments have been absolutely hilarious. 😂 (Chris and I will share our favourite ones soon.)

So thank you to everyone who has shared it, commented on it, sent it to their mates or joined in with the madness.

We wanted a mural people would notice.

Mission accomplished.

(Possibly a little too successfully.)

I did actually pop down the Aldi UK middle aisle before we took the scaffolding down to see if they had a 30-foot curtain to hide it behind until we were happy that everything was finished. Unfortunately they’d just sold the last one, so I came out with a trumpet, a sandwich and a violin instead. 😂

Behind all the jokes, Chris has put a huge amount of work and skill into a massive piece of street art, around 30 feet high, and he’ll be back up there over the next few weeks doing more work on it when the weather allows.

The one thing we all have in common is that we are all different and we all have different perspectives. And to be clear, we’re happy for people to laugh, criticise and make jokes about the mural - we’ve laughed a lot too. We just ask that comments are aimed at the wall rather than the hard working, decent family man holding the paintbrush.

The mural itself will be our tribute to Ronnie, snooker and street art. And if all this attention has made you curious, come and see it properly.

Then come inside Spot On too and say hi.

Inside, we’re creating something completely different: a celebration of snooker, the Crucible, Sheffield, music, culture and community. And we promise you, Spot On Snooker and Pool Club, Sheffield is like no other snooker club in the world when it comes to the mix of facilities, atmosphere, tributes to the game and community.

So come and see what Chris has helped us create inside as well.

Have a game. Have a wander around. Go outside and inspect Sheffield’s suddenly rather famous wall. Then decide for yourself whether Ronnie needs a cue, a touch-up or immediate medical attention. 😂

Thanks again for making this one of the strangest weeks we’ve had at Spot On.

And Chris... as Jack Karnehm famously said before Cliff's 147, good luck, mate. 🫶

More visible platform up ready for round two, just for the face. You can see the original maintenance scaffold and see how much more difficult it was to see it all together. I wonder if the finished article will get so much attention.... 😄🤔🤔

Well, it's fair to say we weren't expecting quite this much attention over the last couple of days! 😅

A few people have probably wondered why we haven't posted anything ourselves about the mural yet.

The simple answer is that neither Chris nor us had treated it as the finished piece and we weren't ready to, well, errrm, "share it" fully yet (well, as much as you can not share a massive work in progress piece on a massive wall!).

A job like this would often be done from a cherry picker, which lets the artist move around and, crucially, keep coming back down and standing well away from the wall to see how the whole image is coming together. Unfortunately, because of the layout and access to the land at the back of the building, we didn't have that luxury.

We therefore used the large full-length scaffold that was already in place. That gave Chris the access he needed to paint it, but it also created one fairly obvious problem: the scaffold itself obscured his view and made it very difficult for him to properly stand back and assess the whole face as it developed.

Once the scaffold came down, we could finally assess the mural properly from the viewpoint everyone else sees it from.

And yes, we've seen what you've seen. There are parts of the face that need tweaking, particularly around the eye and mouth.

The good news is that we don't actually think it's that far off as a whole. Some relatively small changes will make a huge difference to finish it, so we'll arrange whatever access Chris needs, whether that's smaller scaffold towers or something similar, and let him get back up there and do what he does.

So watch this space over the next couple of weeks.

What has upset us is seeing some of the reaction becoming personal towards Chris.

People are absolutely entitled to like or dislike a mural (work in progress or otherwise). If you put something enormous on the side of a building, you're obviously inviting opinions, and we've got a sense of humour. Some of the comments have genuinely made us laugh.

But having an opinion about a piece of artwork is one thing. Slagging off the person who created it is another.

Chris has already done some amazing work (some might say scarily good!) for us and anybody who has seen his other work inside the club will know what a talented artist he is. One mural needing a few adjustments doesn't suddenly change that.

We've also noticed one or two people and businesses choosing to fan the flames a little. That's their choice.

Our philosophy has always been slightly different.

We genuinely like seeing other local clubs and businesses succeed. Competition is healthy because it means people are playing the game. We've even given equipment and other bits to competitors when we've been able to help them, and we'd happily do so again.

We're also a relatively small club, not an academy, so naturally we don't attract the same number of professional players that some academies do. But we love snooker every bit as much, and we'd genuinely love to see more professionals support ordinary clubs as well as academies. Places like ours are where huge numbers of people first pick up a cue, play with their mates, join leagues and fall in love with the game. The grassroots matters too.

There are enough difficulties involved in running local clubs and businesses without us trying to create more for each other. We'd much rather see the snooker community helping each other grow.

That's also why we make a conscious effort to support local people, whether they're tradespeople, suppliers, artists or other businesses. When somebody has been good to us, we'll support them.

And Chris has been very good to us.

We're not prescious about opinion, but we are precious about people and community.

Of course, share your opinions but please remember there's a real person behind the paintbrush.

Thanks for all your hard work so far, Chris. We're looking forward to seeing it finished. ❤️