Stephen Lee turned 50 on Saturday, and he was able to celebrate the end of his 12-year ban from snooker for match fixing.
The former world number five was suspended in October of 2012 following reports of irregular betting patterns during a Premier League fixture with John Higgins.
A wider investigation followed before an independent tribunal found Lee guilty of fixing matches in 2008 and 2009, including a World Championship encounter at the Crucible Theatre.
The Englishman was handed a 12-year sentence in 2014, backdated to when his original suspension began two years earlier on his 38th birthday.
It was the most severe punishment handed to a player in the game’s history until last year’s Chinese match-fixing scandal saw Liang Wenbo and Li Hang given lifetime bans from the sport.
In theory, Lee is now free to return to competitive action from when his snooker ban ended on October 12th, 2024.
However, it’s unlikely that we’ll see him competing in any tournament sanctioned by or affiliated with the World Professional Billiard and Snooker Association (WPBSA) in the near future.
Lee owes the WPBSA £125,000 in legal fees related to the court cases and unsuccessful appeals from a decade ago.
When approached for comment, a spokesperson for the WPBSA told SnookerHQ.com: “Stephen Lee would need to reach a satisfactory agreement with the WPBSA over settlement of his costs before he could play.”
The unpaid fines will prevent Lee from participating on the Q Tour, Q School, and the WSF Championship – normal routes for amateur players to gain promotion back to the World Snooker Tour.
What has Stephen Lee said?
“I must get asked this weekly, daily, minutely,” Stephen Lee said about a possible comeback in 2022, as reported in The Mirror.
“I would like to say no, but I am still capable of playing. Let’s see what happens in two years. It’s not a no, and not a yes.”
“We can only just see what happens in a couple of years’ time. I have some exciting things coming up, and I’m also getting older.
“My eyes are getting worse, and I never had good eyes to start with. As you get older the determination and the fire goes.”
Yet it appears any of those small aspirations have since disappeared, with Lee confirming as much in a Facebook post in January this year.
“Not a chance of it my friend,” was Lee’s reply to a comment on the social media platform which encouraged him to complete the comeback.
“I struggle to break off nowadays. It’s down to my son now…”
Lee’s son Alfie is an aspiring amateur player who has competed in Q School and at the WSF Championship in 2023.
What did Lee achieve in snooker?
When he was suspended in 2012, Stephen Lee was regarded as one of the best players in the world and had recently secured his fifth career ranking title.
The Englishman graduated to the pro tour in the same year as Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins, and Mark Williams – the fabled Class of 1992.
He didn’t quite enjoy the same level of success as his contemporaries from that era, but his silky cue action was widely regarded as among the smoothest in history.
In addition to reaching the 2008 Masters final where he was denied Triple Crown glory by Mark Selby, Lee’s best finish at the World Championship was a semi-final appearance in 2003.
He won the Grand Prix twice (renamed the LG Cup in 2001), the Scottish Open, the Welsh Open, and the Players Tour Championship Grand Finals.
During the 2000/01 and 2003/04 snooker seasons, Lee was ranked as high as number five on the official world rankings list.
Why was Stephen Lee banned?
Lee had survived several investigations into suspicious betting patterns prior to the one that eventually banished him from the sport in 2014.
A tribunal ruled he deliberately lost matches against Ken Doherty, Neil Robertson, and Marco Fu at the 2008 Malta Cup.
He was also deemed to have agreed to lose the first frame against both Stephen Hendry and Mark King during matches played at the 2008 UK Championship.
Lee was additionally found guilty of influencing the outcome of matches against Mark Selby at the 2009 China Open and Ryan Day at the 2009 World Championship.
Since getting banned, the Trowbridge potter has had other run-ins with the law.
In 2014, Lee was fined by Swindon Magistrates’ Court for failing to deliver a cue he had sold online to the buyer.
Four years later, he appeared in court again for teaching snooker without a permit in Hong Kong.
Featured photo credit: Monique Limbos
