Major honours
A single win gave Ireland one of the most emotional scenes in Crucible history. Ken Doherty beat six-time champion Stephen Hendry 18-12 in the 1997 World Championship final, one of the few players ever to beat Hendry in a final, and the first world champion from Dublin. He had already won the 1993 World Amateur Championship before turning professional, leaving him as one of the few players to have held world titles at both amateur and professional level. Fergal O'Brien never reached Doherty's peak of titles but stayed in the tour's upper reaches for more than twenty years, serving as the country's second pillar. Since Doherty's win, Ireland is often compared with Northern Ireland for the combined number of champions produced across the island of Ireland as a whole, but as an independent nation, Doherty remains its only world champion.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The defeat of Stephen Hendry in the 1997 final remains the single biggest moment in Irish snooker, and within the island of Ireland, Doherty is often grouped in the same lineage as Northern Ireland's Higgins and Taylor.