It certainly adds to my enjoying of matches by having a little flutter in the way I think it will go - betting on Ramy at the ToC was fairly safe in the end but I had a few heart attacks - the nice thing is they have in running betting and with someone like Ramy at odds of 4.5 to win when 0-2 down meant i did very nicely with a £10 bet there.

The ToC tournament was great viewing although a pain for us pommes with the final finishing at 2.30am - there were a few aussies in the chat room which was nice to see - not many tournaments in Europe I suppose are easy for viewing down under live.

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This sport is dying in many areas throughout the world, for various reasons. However if we are to attract numbers to squash, and have good coaches employed, it has to be attractive, as well as lucrative.  There are a lot of very talented champions who are still battling for a quid, going into their fifties and sixties, unless they got a bit lucky, and that is not a good sign for the elite sports people after years of very hard physical training/work.

We need a balance, and so far that is not happening.

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I think it can be good for earning money through sponsorship, but it can also be dangerous in a sport where the participants aren't paid very much. With the recent problems in other sports the last thing we want is players starting to throw games....especially as unlike footballers or other high paid sports, squash players could probably make more money doing that than they are used to getting from playing well. I would like to think the people involved in the sport are better than that but I'm not so naive as to bet on it! (pun intended)

sparty

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