MULTIPLE world champion Steve Davis is at a snooker event in Shipley tonight, and beforehand, he told the T&A he has high hopes for the sport’s youth and female players, including Keighley’s Rebecca Kenna.

But while he was more keen to talk about the future, he was happy to reminisce about his famous 1986 battle with Bradford icon Joe Johnson

Asked if there were any future stars to keep an eye on in the sport, Davis said: “It’s hard to dig out a player who’s totally unknown, partly because there’s lots of cameras these days and also because you never know when they’ll stop improving.

“The likes of Jackson Page and Aaron Holt are looking good and then you’ve got the two young Chinese lads in Zhao Xintong and Yan Bingtao, though they’re already established after winning the UK Championship and the Masters respectively.

“It’ll be interesting to see how long Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins and Mark Williams stay at the top, as they keep pushing back the tide, but surely they’ll struggle to keep that standard up for much longer.

“Judd Trump has had a bit of a headstart on the younger players with everything he’s done, so he can then be the dominant player, but he’ll have a number of others snapping at his heels.”

Trump is part of the BetVictor World Mixed Doubles in September, which sees the four top-ranked male players in the world taking on the four best females, which includes Kenna.

Davis said: “Rebecca is a great player, and this Mixed Doubles is a good thing.

“I’m pleased that we have some like Rebecca who’ve been handed tour cards, but no female player has come through Q School yet to turn professional, and what a breakthrough that would be.

“We’ve seen in darts and golf that women can produce those levels, but we’ve not yet got that balance in snooker.

“There’s still room for improvement in the women's game, but it’s a far better playing standard than it used to be, and I’m just glad that women are more accepted in the sport now, because they probably weren’t particularly comfortable with even going to snooker clubs in the 1970s and 1980s.”

Speaking of the 1980s, that was when Davis was stunned by Bradford’s Johnson in the World Snooker final.

Davis recalled: “Joe finally proved to everyone in the game at that 1986 tournament just how good he was.

“We all knew how talented he was, but he hadn’t produced it on TV.

“He turned professional quite late and I wonder what might have been if he’d done it at 16 or 17.

“He dominated our final, but he didn’t catch me by surprise, because he was as good as anyone on his day, even he didn’t replicate it often.”

That match took place 36 years ago now, and while Davis has long since retired from professional snooker, his other passion continues to take him to new heights and places.

He beamed: “I’ve been DJing for a while now and it was tough in lockdown, but now things have really opened back up again.

“It’s become a second career, but it wasn’t planned at all, so it’s taken me by surprise.

“I’ve found two real hobbies in my life, snooker and DJing, and both have become careers.

“Even with snooker, I didn’t know how it was going to pan out so I’ve been very lucky in my life.

“Now I’ve found something else in DJing, and I was even playing a set at Glastonbury the other week.”