{"id":668886,"date":"2026-01-02T11:53:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T11:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/668886\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T11:53:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T11:53:11","slug":"the-life-and-legacy-of-snooker-hero-and-masters-champ-paul-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/668886\/","title":{"rendered":"The life and legacy of snooker hero and Masters champ Paul Hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/sport1\/hi\/other_sports\/snooker\/6035879.stm\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">When he died<\/a>, in October 2006, snooker&#8217;s close-knit fraternity lost one of its most popular brothers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He was given an 80% chance of living,&#8221; Kristina says. &#8220;The odds were quite good. It didn&#8217;t work out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s awful. I wouldn&#8217;t wish any mum and dad to lose a child.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think the players all thought he would be OK and he would be back again. It will have been a shock for them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At their son&#8217;s funeral, at Leeds Parish Church, Alan recalls people &#8220;queuing opposite the church&#8221; and lining the road beyond.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We didn&#8217;t expect the turnout,&#8221; he says. &#8220;They loved him in Leeds.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Forever The Beckham of the Baize, Hunter&#8217;s parents would receive &#8220;the biggest bunch of flowers you can imagine&#8221;, along with a letter of condolence, from Princess Zara Phillips, whom he and Alan had met at Royal Ascot some years earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When he died, in October 2006, snooker&#8217;s close-knit fraternity lost one of its most popular brothers. &#8220;He was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-668886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}