The Crucible theatre will hold the World Snooker Championship for the 40th time over the next fortnight. We’d treasure to hear your stories from the iconic venueThe 1976 World Snooker Championship was held at two venues,the Middlesbrough Town corridor and the Wythenshawe Forum in Manchester. It wasn’t an ideal arrangement for players, fans or the sport, and so snooker promoter and former professional Mike Watterson set off to find a new home for the tournament.
The chronicle goes that his wife,Carol, visited the Crucible theatre in early 1977 to watch a play and was so taken by the place that she told her husband to scuttle the nomadic tournament to Sheffield. The championship had flitted from London to Sydney to Birmingham to Manchester to Melbourne in the 1970s and needed to lay down some roots. Watterson rented the venue for a couple of weeks, or sorted out a deal with the snooker association and,on 18 April 1977, Ray Reardon began his defence of the 1976 title in Sheffield. The World Snooker Championship has been there ever since.
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Source: theguardian.com