The Republic of Ireland’s Fergal O’Brien and Ken Doherty have been representing their country together for more than two decades.
As they prepare to cue off in this week’s World Cup event in Wuxi, captain Fergal says they’re hoping experience counts and they can finally take some silverware home.
“For me and Ken, this is a very important tournament and we would absolutely love to win it,” he said.
“We’ve come close before. We got to the World Cup final with Stephen Murphy in 1996 and lost 10-7 to Scotland and we were also runners-up in the Nations Cup in 2001.
“Playing for your country is always a great honour. We class these as prestigious titles, so we won’t be getting through the group and feeling happy, we’re here to win it.”
Republic of Ireland have been drawn in the same group as China A, Hong Kong, Belgium, Germany and Egypt.
“There are never any easy draws, but we’ll have no real complaints if we don’t go through,” said Fergal.
“China A is the only other team in the group with two tour players and we play them first, so we’ll be trying to catch Ding and Liang cold.”
Better prepared
In the last World Cup in 2015, Fergal and Ken failed to qualify out of the group after a 4-1 defeat to eventual winners Yan Bingtao and Zhou Yuelong (China B) in the first match proved costly.
“We had a really bad start last time as neither of our cues arrived,” explained Fergal. “We both had to borrow a cue off of Hossein Vafaei from and I remember it being totally different to mine. If I was playing plain ball or straight it wasn’t too bad, but anything with side and I was lost.
“This put us on the backfoot and we were chasing our tail for the rest of the group.”
If this wasn’t enough, Ken’s preparations were also affected by the fact that he never received his suitcase off of the flight and was struck down with food poisoning.
Fergal recalled: “Ken was wearing my underpants, my socks, one of my shirts and had to borrow a waistcoat, trousers and shoes from someone else.
“It was a total disaster! We were mad keen to get over there and this just totally scuppered us. We had a bad experience and are hopefully due some good luck this time.”
Experience counts
While some of this year’s team partnerships are relatively new, Fergal and Ken have years of experience to draw on as they bid to land top prize.
Fergal said: “Since we turned pro, we must have played thousands upon thousands of frames together, so we’re looking to use all the experience that comes with that.
“In the doubles frame, our history (of playing together) should make the discussions a little easier and help us to make the best shot selections.
“In the singles frames, there’s a lot of pressure and it’s not always about scoring. The format lends itself well to hard matchplay which I’m willing to say suits us well.”
