Simon Webb looked set to embark on a cricket career until osteosarcoma in his femur turned his attention away from the crease and in the direction of the pool table.
Simon, who is best known for his work commentating on pool alongside numerous other sports, was a talented cricketer playing for both Warminster Cricket Club and Wiltshire County Cricket Club. The recently retired professional pool player’s passion was cricket up until the age of 14 when he became ill and was unable to play the game he loved.
Simon was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a form of cancer, in his right leg. To remove the malignant tumour, Simon’s right femur was replaced with a prosthetic.
“I was ill for about two years,” he told Fen Regis Trophies. “I didn’t find out till fairly recently, but if I was a little bit younger, I probably wouldn’t have survived.
“The survival rate, If I was born in 1970 rather than 1980, was about 5%. When I had it, the survival rate was a lot higher.
“So, I feel very, very fortunate actually that it was just inconvenience more than anything else.”
Finding a New Passion
With his cricketing career cut short, Simon needed to find another outlet to appease his competitive nature. Due to having a prosthetic femur in his right leg, a low-impact non-contact sport was required and that’s exactly what Simon found at his local snooker club.
Simon said: “I had to find something competitive, and I was shown the local snooker and then fell in love with cue sports from there.”
He continued: “I’d play snooker all the time and pool once a week…pool I would play on a Monday night with my mates down the pub.”
Simon was eventually given the green light by doctors to return to cricket, but his inability to play to the same level as before his illness meant that cue sports remained a huge passion for him.
“When I went back to cricket, I wasn’t even close to being the play I was…I played cricket until I was 30, but I didn’t get as much out of it as I thought I would.
“Snooker was what I did in the winter – pool, as well – but it was mainly snooker.”
Eventually, Simon’s passion would shift in favour of pool once he called time on his cricketing career once and for all.
“After I stopped playing cricket, I started taking pool more seriously,” he admitted. “I was quite late to higher-level pool.
“I saw a flyer to go and try out for the county team. I knew I was good, but I had only ever played local stuff…I couldn’t tell you anything about the wider pool community.
“I saw the flyer and I was like ‘you know, I’m quite good at it’. I wanted a new challenge, so I went and tried out.
“I was playing in the top county team straightaway and in the England team within a year.”
Professional Pool and Commentary
With his first trophy coming in his first national-level event at the Bristol Masters, Simon went on to enjoy nearly 10 years as a top-level professional before making the move behind the microphone. Away from the sport, Simon worked in architecture for 20 years and though he was playing and earning money as a professional, it wasn’t enough on its own.
At the time that Simon was playing, pool was seeing its breakthrough in terms of broadcasting. That turned out to be perfect timing for Simon, who little did he know would be about to discover another new passion, this time for producing and covering live events as part of the Ultimate Pool series.
“The tournaments I was playing in and first being broadcast, I started doing a little bit of commentary when it was on YouTube.
“When it came along to being on TV, I was sort of thrust into it, with a co-commentator needed to work with the professionals they were bringing in.”
Though he is an ex-professional pool player Simon enjoys a wide range of sports, and he explained that one conversation opened the door to a world of opportunity.
He said: “I got chatting to the owner of the broadcast company and the first event we did and I started talking about how I was passionate about sport and would love to get involved in all sorts of things.
“He asked me to come along to a rugby job the next week. So, I turned up and worked on a broadcast for a rugby job – not commentary-wise, but I got to work on all sorts of broadcasting roles.
“I just loved it! I love working in sport.
“Over the course of the last 10 years, I’ve gone from working solely on my business to sliding in more and more broadcasting work.
“It became 50-50 and now, it’s probably more 80-20 in favour of broadcasting, maybe a little bit more than that.
“I work predominantly on pool at the moment, because Ultimate Pool is putting on so many tournaments, but I’d say last year was a better reflection when 40% of what I was working on was pool, with the rest being swimming, darts, and snooker, along with a bit of cricket and tennis.”
Simon added: “From chatting with the owner of the broadcast company, that’s where the whole broadcasting career stemmed from.
“I’ve never stopped wanting to learn. It’s always been like that. I didn’t just start commentating and someone going ‘oh, you’re quite good’…I spent the next five years studying and learning.
“It’s constantly learning and constantly being intrigued by ‘why are we showing this this way and what is the reason for that?’ and building up a knowledge base.”
Simon’s passion for all things sport, whether that be playing or covering, shines through and his insatiable appetite to learn and be better than he was yesterday is what has propelled him to become one of the voices of pool, as well as many other sports he has worked on.
By Aaron Gratton
