Snooker star Mark Williams answers where he’ll play next season

Mark Williams appears to have confirmed that he will be participating on the World Snooker Tour during the upcoming 2024/25 season.

There has been widespread speculation in recent weeks surrounding the future of some of the sport’s most notable stars, including Williams.

The Welshman won the Tour Championship at the start of April and is currently ranked as high as number six in the world.

But Williams has delivered cryptic messages in interviews of late, sparking fears from fans that he would be jumping ship to one of the rumoured breakaway tours.

Following his triumph in Manchester, where he beat the world’s top three players including Ronnie O’Sullivan in the final, the 49 year-old expressed how it could be his last event on ITV.

Then after his 10-9 loss to Si Jiahui in the first round of the ongoing World Snooker Championship, Williams suggested that he may not return to the Crucible again.

The comments, added to others made by the likes of O’Sullivan and John Higgins, led many to believe that drastic change is afoot.

There is speculation that there is an Asian-backed breakaway tour in the pipelines where players involved will receive a guaranteed six-figure sum of prize money.

However, Williams has seemed to refute any possibility that he is associated with this in any way.

The three-time world champion responded to a thread on social media with former blogger and amateur snooker tournament director Snookerbacker.

When directly asked on X, “Just tell us then MJ. Not like you to be so cloak and dagger. Are you staying on the WST or not?”, Mark Williams succinctly replied: “Yes.”

Under a different comment, Williams elaborated that he “won’t be in a few comps, especially if they clash with the Chinese pool.”

Williams skipped last month’s World Open in Yushan to participate in a Chinese pool tournament, a different pathway he has already openly admitted to wanting to pursue.

If it is indeed the case that Williams won’t be joining any possible breakaway tour, it will come as a relief to his supporters.

Judd Trump, meanwhile, has been much more open on his plans – the world number two saying at the weekend: “I don’t think I would really get out of bed for an exhibition series.”

“I’m very happy where I am, with the tournaments I play in. I need something with history, heritage, and those kinds of venues. I need something to play for.

“‘I want the biggest challenges, and I look forward to hopefully playing in more different places.

“I’m just trying to win every single tournament and trying to get back to number one.

“For me, it’s about the titles. At the end of the day everyone wants more money, but this isn’t the right time for me.”

Another former world champion, Shaun Murphy also weighed in on the controversial subject that has been creating ripples within the game.

“Well, I mean, there are rumours afoot of breakaway tours,” Shaun Murphy said on the OneFourSeven snooker podcast last week.

“Nobody else seems to want to talk about it, but there are rumours around. I saw on social media my name get mentioned that Murphy signed an NDA not to talk about it.”

“For clarity, I haven’t. I have not been approached by anyone about anything. I only know what I read.

“So it was quite amusing to see my name featured in it – someone tweeted, ‘you don’t have to be a Magician to know who I’m talking about,’ from one of these anonymous accounts.

“But there are a lot of rumours flying around. John Higgins even said coming into the event something along the lines of, ‘I’m going to go to the Crucible for one more crack at it.’

“Again, you don’t have to be a super genius to work out what these guys are trying to say.

“I don’t know who’s been approached and been talked to about this breakaway tour, if there is one. I don’t know who’s been approached.”

Featured photo credit: WST