ONE thing is almost certain during this year's Travis Perkins UK Snooker Championship in York if last year here and results from other recent major tournaments elsewhere are anything to go by - big names will suffer shock exits.

Last year, defending champion Mark Williams fell at his first hurdle. Irish former world champion Ken Doherty, losing finalist at the Barbican Centre the previous two years, was another first round casualty. And former world and UK champion John Higgins lost his first match.

Matthew Stevens, whose triumph last year was his first ranking title in ten years as a professional, was a surprise first round casualty last month in the Totesport Grand Prix at Preston.

Just as likely these days, with many of the top 32 men pretty much as good as each other, is the possibility of players less well known to the public coming to the fore.

That is well illustrated by world number 15 Graeme Dott forging through to the Embassy World Champion-ship final at Sheffield last May, beating John Higgins and Stevens on his way.

He found the genius of Ronnie O'Sullivan too hot to handle in the final, though.

And in the opening ranking tournament of this season world number 17 Ian McCulloch gave his home town fans plenty to cheer as he reached the totesport Grand Prix final. Once again, though, O'Sullivan was too good for his challenger.

And McCulloch suffered a shock 5-0 first round defeat by Andy Hicks in the British Open at Brighton earlier this week.

And on form up to the start of the British Grand Prix final stages in Brighton this week it seems clear The Rocket is the man they've all got to beat.

World champion again and back on top as world No 1, his career has become much more stable and focused since he teamed up with the great Ray Reardon as his mentor.

Despite playing brilliantly in York last year O'Sullivan was at one stage in emotional shreds because of personal problems. He sorted those out and got to the semi-finals before finding snooker's most intense star Stephen Hendry in rock-solid form.

Yorkshire hero Paul Hunter has Jimmy White, old rival Stevens and the always determined Hendry in his half of the draw. It could be White against Hunter in the third round.

O'Sullivan is in the lower half of the draw along with Williams, Higgins, Peter Ebdon and Steve Davis. Indeed, Davis and O'Sullivan could meet in the third round.

In the first round former world champion John Parrott has a tough opener against Thailand star James Wattana, with a second round match against Marco Fu awaiting the winner.

York snooker fans are once again in for another feast of great play in the last event the Barbican Centre is to stage before closing for refurbishment.

Updated: 16:33 Wednesday, November 10, 2004