By Phil Harlow BBC Sport at The Crucible

Hann fancied swapping snooker for boxing

Good to see Quinten Hann keeping the longstanding snooker bad boy tradition alive with his eventful departure from proceedings after his defeat to Andy Hicks.

With the match running away from him, Hann received a quiet word in his ear from referee Lawrie Annandale when the end of a promising break prompted a foul-mouthed outburst.

And after his 10-4 defeat, Hann eschewed the conventional handshake, pat on the back and mumbled "well played" routine in favour of an angry confrontation.

Hann decided to offer Hicks outside, told him he would always be "short and bald" and made Annandale perform an impromptu impression of his celebrated boxing counterpart Mills Lane as he stepped in between the pair.

Hicks, with masterful understatement, conceded their was "no love lost" between them.

Joe Swail provided the biggest shock of the tournament so far as he knocked out last year's runner-up Ken Doherty with an almost faultless display of snooker.

Swail hasn't had the happiest of seasons and broke the habit of a lifetime by turning to Ronnie O'Sullivan's former coach Del Hill for advice.

But when Swail attempted to credit Hill with the amazing turnaround in his form at the post-match press conference, Hill suddenly became very bashful.

"Don't tell 'em the secret, Joe," yelled Hill, who apparently spotted the flaw in Swail's technique inside five minutes.

Higgins potted the pink into the corner but the ball's spot was partly occupied by a cluster of reds requiring Tabb to show her in-depth knowledge of rule Section 3, 7 (g).

As we all know, it states that "in the case of pink and black, if all spots are occupied and there is no available space between the relevant spot and the nearest part of the top cushion, the colour shall be placed as near to its own spot as possible on the centre line of the table below the spot."

In this instance, that meant the pink had to be returned to the centre of a group of reds with just enough room to fit the ball in the middle.

After several minutes of rolling balls minute distances across the cloth - much to Higgins' amusement - in an effort to get everything just so, Tabb was satisfied with her display and play could commence.

Well, rules are rules.

With the scores level, Day missed an attempted double on the black by the narrowest of margins only to see the ball roll agonisingly across the jaws of the pocket.

The cue ball was sent to the other end, but surely Higgins, the 1998 world champion, couldn't miss with the black just centimetres from the pocket?

He didn't. But he also sent the white following on straight into the pocket as well, a shot this diary compiler has come close to perfecting.