Return of the Maltese Falcon

I've done some strange things in the cause of sport. My Dad once got a letter published in the Telegraph when he wrote to tell them that I had been up until three in the morning watching Tim Henman lose....on Ceefax.

Today was rather similar as I spent rather longer than was credible hunting down the result of a one frame shoot out between two foreign snooker players, both placed in the lower reaches of the world rankings in a fairly unimportant new snooker event

Thanks to Twitter, this stuff is a lot easier than it used to be and I was soon feeling pretty pleased. My man had won (well his opponent had pulled out with illness) and all was now right with the world.

OK that's probably a bit strong and I suspect that Andy Gray or Alex Reid or most Egyptians might not agree, but maybe if they are fans of Tony Drago, they might feel that life is not quite as awful as it could be because the Maltese Falcon is back!

Tony Drago first came to my attention in the early 1980s when I read a little snippet in the Mirror about this young Maltese kid who played quicker than Jimmy White. This name stuck with me and I was fascinated to see him play. I had to wait a while but possibly a year later, a match at the Crucible finished early and to keep the crowd amused, an exhibition was played between Tony Drago and someone else (John Virgo?). Well the Tornado didn't let me down. He was quicker that the Hurricane, faster than the Whirlwind, he was so quick that the umpire was having trouble respotting the balls before he played his next shot. He was truly awesome and I was hooked and have followed him ever since.

What was not clear that day but that we subequently discovered was that he was also rather flawed as a snooker player. His temperament was a little fragile, he was prone to the most incredible lapses in concentration and perhaps most crucially, he was possbly worse with the rest than my mate Tim.

None of this put me off him in the slightest. Indeed the attraction grew. He is so full of expression that you feel as though you can see straight into his soul. When he missed a shot, you could see the frustration etched on his face. If he could keep things together and keep the ball within reach, he was sublime. The trouble was that everyone knew how flaky he was, so the other players just tried to put him under pressure, knowing there was a good chance he could crack and sadly he often did.

His career was up and down in the 80s and 90s but he had some great performances. Indeed he is probably still Malta's greatest ever sportsman (Laurie Pace anyone?). As the standard in the sport increased, his ranking fell and he pretty much packed up a few years ago to concentrate on pool (shorter attention span and no rests!).

Anyway this year he has decided to give it another go and so I'm back wasting my time scouring obscure snooker websites and delving into the depths of Twitter to follow the progress of Tony Drago, my sporting hero, in the hope of seeing him back in the big time once again.