This was published in the Daily Mail yesterday

Ronnie O’Sullivan insists he WILL play at the World Championship even if crowds are let in as ‘the Rocket’ is ready to put up with 17 days at the Crucible for just one reason — the world title

• The Rocket struggled with having to self isolate in an on-site hotel room
• He faces living under strict rules at World Snooker Championship in Sheffield 
• O’Sullivan has compared spending time in a cell to being in a bio-secure bubble 
• He has also voiced concerns about crowds being allowed back into the Crucible 

By DAVID COVERDALE FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Ronnie O’Sullivan is talking about the time he was locked up rather than locked down.

‘I was 17 and they thought I’d abducted somebody,’ explains the five-time world snooker champion matter-of-factly.

‘There were 30 police vans surrounding me and they locked off the whole of Chigwell. It was like a scene off the FBI show on Sky.

 

Ronnie O’Sullivan faces living under strict rules at World Snooker Championship in Sheffield

‘They stuck me in the back of a van and I was sitting there thinking, “What does abduction mean?”. I’d just come back from three days at Champneys Spa and I was going to watch a boxing match in Brentwood.

They put me in a white suit, took my car away for forensics and kept me in a cell. They did a proper job. And then they let me out 24 hours later saying it was mistaken identity. I was like, “OK, fair call, nice one, try not to make that mistake again”.’

O’Sullivan laughs as he finishes sharing his bizarre but previously untold tale. The reason it has finally come out in the open is because the 44-year-old is comparing spending time in a cell to being in a bio-secure bubble, of which his only experience so far was a negative one.

When competitive snooker returned last month in Milton Keynes, the Rocket struggled with having to isolate in an on-site hotel room while waiting for the results of his Covid-19 tests and only being allowed to eat what was delivered to his room.

‘I did 16 hours in a cell once and it was better because I got to choose my own food,’ quipped O’Sullivan at the time.

The Rocket struggled with having to isolate in an on-site hotel room during the pandemic

And speaking exclusively to Sportsmail, he again jokes how prison would be preferable to having to abide by those same strict restrictions for the 17 days of the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield, which begins on Friday.

While rules have been relaxed for the Crucible, players must limit their social contact as they will be tested for coronavirus before the tournament and the quarter-final stage — and anyone who is positive will be disqualified. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it,’ says O’Sullivan, who is in fine form as he gurns for the cameras at the Woodford Wells Sports Club, near his home in Essex.

‘I don’t really love snooker that much to go through that suffering. When I go to tournaments, I like to go for a run, go to the gym, meet friends, get the right food in me.

‘I am very funny with what I eat and I am also used to going running every day, seven or eight miles. That has been my medicine for the last 20 years.

‘A happy snooker player is a player that will play well. An unhappy one is not going to play as well.’

O’Sullivan also has concerns about crowds being allowed back into the Crucible, as the Government on Friday announced the tournament will be used as a test event for the safe return of fans.

Despite previously threatening to pull out if spectators were present, he has now confirmed to Sportsmail he will play. But O’Sullivan says he would rather lose in the first round than be beaten in the final.

The 44-year-old has compared spending time in a cell to being in a bio-secure bubble

‘Why would you want to waste 17 days when you can only waste one day?’ he asks. ‘Going to Sheffield, it’s either win it or nothing. Getting to the final is no consolation.

‘I’d much rather bow out in the first round than lose in the final because then at least I’ve got 16 days to not have the battle scars and just get on with life.’

SHOULD the Rocket pocket the £500,000 prize money for winning the Worlds, he knows exactly what his first buy will be.

‘I’m looking at getting a campervan,’ reveals O’Sullivan, who recently sold his £130,000 60ft canal boat because he never spent a night on it. ‘Me and my mate are thinking of getting one and then going around Europe doing obscure running races.

‘My girlfriend has said that if it’s just like the boat and doesn’t get used, then she won’t be too happy.

‘But she knows I’m serious about my running. If I can manage my schedule enough and make use of it, then that would be something I’d like to do.’

Running — the title of his 2013 autobiography — was O’Sullivan’s salvation in the 2000s as he recovered from alcohol and drug addictions and a battle with depression.

Players will be tested for coronavirus before the tournament and the quarter-final stage

He joined the Woodford Green Athletics Club and regularly took part in road and cross-country races, proudly boasting a personal best of 17:04m over 5km and 34:50m over 10km.

O’Sullivan had let his running take a backseat over the past decade but, after piling on the pounds at the start of lockdown, he has caught the bug again and has shed more than a stone and a half. ‘I was on the steak-and- kidney pie diet for the first few weeks,’ he grins. ‘I thought, “If I am going to be sitting here for three months and I can’t go anywhere, let’s see what happens if I start eating whatever I want”. It was like a social experiment.

‘So I was banging in the old steak-and-kidney pies and just going for it, mate. I was eating them like, “Bosh, bosh, bosh”.

‘But all of a sudden, I woke up one day and I was like, “Jesus Christ, your diet really is important, I’ve got to sort this out”. I didn’t like what I was seeing so I just thought I’d get back into running because I’ve had nothing else to do.

‘I was nearly 14st 8lb and I’m down to 13st now in the space of 10 weeks. I am probably running six days a week, averaging seven miles a day.

‘I have gone back to the running club and I am the slowest of the lot, just hanging on, but eventually I’ll be flying again. I’m trying to get my body used to it and putting myself through the punishment.’

Because he has got back into running, Eurosport pundit O’Sullivan describes lockdown as the best three months of his life. But he hopes it leads to a cultural change in this country, where people spend less time commuting in cars to work and more time exercising.

O’Sullivan has voiced concerns about crowds being allowed back into the Crucible

As a nation, I think we should focus on being a lot healthier,’ the world No 6 says, this time with a much more serious tone.

‘What all this has taught me is that if, God forbid, you get any illness, if you are fit and strong you are more likely to pull through. But if you have obesity problems, that makes you vulnerable.

‘If people can work from home a bit more, that three hours that they’re using commuting, they can use to exercise. I am not going to be travelling to work.

‘Driving to the snooker club used to take an hour and a quarter of my day to get there and back. I have just decided that I am never going to waste an hour and a quarter driving to the club because I can get so much done in that time. If I want to hit a few balls, I will just use my friend’s table around the corner.

‘It’s like if Usain Bolt decided to come out of retirement. He would probably think, “I’m really s*** now”, but we would look at him and think he’s amazing.

‘So I look at myself and think I don’t really need to train properly, I don’t need to be a slave to it. The way I’m doing things now, I’m happy. It is working well.’

HE may no longer be a slave to the baize, but do not let that fool you into thinking O’Sullivan is ready to retire, even if he has threatened it many times. ‘With my game, I could probably play until I was 55, comfortably, and maybe even 60,’ he says. ‘I look around at the competition, I see what is coming through and there is not really a lot about. I hardly practise and I’m still getting to finals and winning tournaments and I am a grandad.

‘I still enjoy the battle. I call it the mustard and I enjoy smothering myself in the mustard, because whatever I do after snooker, it’s not going to be mustard.

‘Snooker niggles at me and I feel that I need that niggle. I’m not ready to let go of the niggle but I can deal with it.

‘A lot of my ups and downs when I was younger were down to the perfectionism that came with playing a sport. It became an obsession, but I have learned to manage that a lot better.

‘I have enjoyed my snooker more in the last 10 years than I ever have done because I just see it as a game with sticks and balls — and I back myself every now and again to do something great.’ In the eyes of many punters and according to most statistics, O’Sullivan is the game’s greatest.

He is the only player to have racked up 1,000 century breaks, he has earned the most career prize money and shares the record for the most ranking titles of 36 with Stephen Hendry.

The one stat he trails Hendry in is world titles — five to the Scot’s seven. But O’Sullivan grins: ‘It’s not really important. I suppose I’ve got to let him have one record, I can’t take them all.’

O’Sullivan’s Crucible crowns came in 2001, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2013, but he reckons he wasted almost a third of his near 30-year career because of his hellraising off-the-table antics, which at one stage saw him check in to rehab at the Priory.

‘The Rocket’ has labelled discussions on allowing fans of the sport back in as ‘insane’

I had a mad few years where I over-indulged and I was in no fit state to compete or win tournaments,’ he admits. ‘I do regret it. People say, “Oh, don’t have regrets”, but I wish I hadn’t gone through that phase The last thing you want to do when your head feels like it’s in a jam jar is go and play snooker.’

O’Sullivan, though, doubts whether he would have surpassed Hendry’s haul even if he had not been such a wild child. ‘To win it five times is beyond what I thought I’d do,’ he says. ‘I’m not greedy. I’m not like a Hendry or a Michael Schumacher or a Tiger Woods who are driven by wins.

‘I’m more a luxury person. I like an easy life and if it comes and it comes easy, I’ll do it. If it doesn’t come easy, then let one of the others have it.’

The sport of snooker is lucky to have their luxury item and will not be the same once he is gone, a point O’Sullivan agrees with.

‘I’m not saying snooker wouldn’t survive and no one is bigger than any sport,’ adds O’Sullivan. ‘But I feel like I have been the fore-runner for snooker in many ways and brought a lot of excitement and a lot of different fans to the sport. I am sure that is down to the energy that I play with.

‘When you put the golf on, there is a different energy when Tiger Woods is playing in an event. I’m not saying I am the Tiger of snooker, but it’s always better to have Tiger wearing his red shirt on a Sunday.’

How the snooker world would love to see O’Sullivan wearing his black shirt and dickie bow on the final Sunday in Sheffield in four weeks’ time.

Well that’s a bit of everything – typical Ronnie – nothing really new either, but the good news that he will play at the Crucible.

How far he will go, and how he will cope, nobody knows, not even him. But at least he’s giving it a try. And, IMO, there is a lot of  what he said here that’s about easing the pressure rather than about a lack of desire. Nobody – NOBODY – can become the best at any sport if they are not competitive beasts, and that never goes away.

Eurosport continues their build-up to the 2020 World Championship with more “Ronnie Crucible memories”

This one is about his bust-up with Alain Robidoux at the Crucible in 1996 

Ronnie O’Sullivan: ‘People thought I was taking the mickey when I started playing left-handed’

Ronnie O’Sullivan admits he wished he began playing left-handed earlier in his career despite causing controversy at the Crucible due to his ambidextrous wizardry.

The five-times world champion lost 16-14 in the 1996 World Championship semi-finals to Peter Ebdon, but his campaign was overshadowed by a bust-up with Canada’s Alain Robidoux in the first round in Sheffield.

O’Sullivan completed a 10-3 win over Robidoux, who was furious when his 20-year-old opponent began playing shots with his left-handed having a constructed a 8-2 lead overnight.

The 1997 World Championship semi-finalist accused O’Sullivan of being “disrespectful” even though his left-handed play has become almost as reliable as his right-handed stance in the ensuing 24 years.

Robidoux continued playing in the ninth frame of the match despite trailing by 43 points with only the pink and black on the table. He refused to shake O’Sullivan’s hand at the end of their fiery encounter, but later apologised for misreading the situation.

“I wish I had started playing left-handed sooner,” O’Sullivan told Eurosport. “I was playing so poorly with my right hand that I should have switched. I knew that I could pot balls with my left hand. But I was aware that people might have thought I was taking the mickey.

“It just got to the point where I wish I had wished I had done it sooner because it was relaxing me. Alain didn’t take it too well. I could understand that at the time. But once I started, it soon became acceptable.

“I beat Peter Ebdon 6-1 in the semi-finals of the Premier League in Kettering a year later playing with my left hand. People quickly realised that I could play as well at times with my left as my right,” said O’Sullivan, who is seeded six for this year’s tournament which begins on Friday 31 July.

“I won seven frames against Stephen Hendry playing with my left hand in a 10-8 win in the final. And he was world champion at the time. It was unfortunate for Alain, but he apologised to me a couple of years later and said he didn’t realise I could play as well as with my left. I accepted his apology. And we were good friends after that.”

In the more recent one, Ronnie remembers 2004 as the “Golden Era” of snooker

Ronnie O’Sullivan on his toughest ever opponents – ‘It was a golden era for snooker’

Ronnie O’Sullivan feels you have to go back 15 years to discover snooker’s true golden era despite rising standards and prize money in the sport.

The five-times world champion – who could win a record £555,000 for a sixth world title next month – pinpoints the season-ending rankings of 2004-2005 to get a true reading of green baize greatness.

In O’Sullivan’s opinion, that was as close to snooker utopia as you could wish to see with seven-times world champion Hendry still competing at the top level and Hunter – who tragically died in 2006 after battling cancer – lifting three Masters titles in the early part of the decade.

With Higgins yet to win another three world titles, Williams fresh from lifting the second of his three Crucible trophies and former Masters and UK champion Stevens competing in the second of two world finals, O’Sullivan believes that period should be celebrated as the halcyon days.

“I’ve always said that snooker enjoyed a golden era when Hendry, Higgins, Williams, Stevens, the great Paul Hunter and myself were battling it out. I truly believe that was the best top six ever,” said O’Sullivan.

“For me, getting through Hendry, Higgins and Williams in their prime was almost impossible. To beat two of them was so, so tough. Nobody has made me fight as tough as that trio in their prime. In some way, the players these days go for their shots a lot more.

“They are much more aggressive. They miss a few balls to let you in, and are less focused on safety. The games are much more enjoyable for me these days than years ago when you had several players you didn’t really like playing because you knew they could match you.

“A lot of the top players try to win frames at one visit. In some ways, those games are easier to play in. You either get taken out early, or you can feed of it to enjoy the battle.”

For thos who wonder about the numbers presented in the part I put in blue, here is the explanation: the World Champion will get £500 000 for his efforts, the highest break prize money will be £15 000 and there will be a £40 000 bonus for a 147, should there be one. Here is the link to the relevant WST annoucement.