5
‘Forest 50 mins, about seven miles with John. Speed sessions 10 × 30 seconds with 30-second recovery. Five minutes recovery. Then 12 × 30 seconds. Felt good. Proper fit.’
It was winter 2011, and I was getting more and more run down. Not sleeping, miserable with the family situation, depressed and exhausted. In December 2011, I beat Ding Junhui 7-1 in the final of the Premier League. I’d not had any success in the ranking events for a couple of years, but this was the tenth time I’d won the Premier League, the seventh in eight years, and I felt in pretty good nick. I got home Sunday night and on Tuesday drove to Sheffield for a PTC event starting on the Wednesday.
I got beaten 4-2 in the first round. The fella played well, no excuses. I didn’t play badly but I just felt I didn’t have any energy. I went back to the hotel and there was me, Gay Robbie (who’s not gay but is very camp) and my friend from Scotland, Charlie, and Patsy Fagin, who won the UK Championship in 1979. I’d asked Patsy to come down to help me with my game.
We’d spent a day on the practice table, and the next day I went downstairs for breakfast and I felt terrible – achy, drained, no energy. I phoned up Mum and Dad and said, I need to come home. I was going to stay in Sheffield for a few days then go straight to the UK Championship, which was in York, but I thought, I can’t do this; I don’t feel right. I couldn’t eat, my stomach felt terrible. But I didn’t think I could drive back. It was a three-hour journey, and if I got caught in traffic I’d be done for.
So I decided to leave my car in Sheffield and get the train home, and Dad went, well, you can’t leave your car there, and I said, well, I can’t get home, I won’t make it, I don’t fancy my chances. But as I walked out of the hotel, I saw the car there and thought, sod it, put the bag in the boot and drove home. I got to Peterborough, about an hour and 20 minutes from home, and I was done. I was driving down the hard shoulder, and I knew that I was about to fall asleep or have an accident, so I put a bit of speed on and just went for it.
I drove straight to Mum’s house in Chigwell, lay on her settee and didn’t eat anything for three or four days except clear soup. Then I spent a few days at my own house and felt a bit better, and I went to the UK Championship. I beat Steve Davis in the first round, and Judd Trump beat me in the second, but I was playing pretty well. I hadn’t yet had a quarter-final in a major event for a couple of years, but I thought, you know what, you’re playing well enough for a breakthrough.
I was so knackered, though. Wherever I was I’d just fall asleep. I’d go down the club to practise and just fall asleep on the settee. I had no energy. I thought, when I’ve got the energy I’ll play, but I hardly ever did have. I’d get to my feet, play for 20 minutes, half an hour, an hour, whatever I could do, and that became my preparation for the World Championship – just lying on the settee and practising whenever I had the strength.
I’d come straight home from matches and sleep. It was mad. I was ill from December 2011 to May 2012. Eventually I went to see the doctor and the tests came back saying I had glandular fever.
‘What do I do?’ I asked the doctor.
‘There’s nothing you can do, Ron,’ he said.
There were times I felt I couldn’t get to the top of the stairs, and all I could do was rest. So I thought, that’s what I’ll do – rest and play, rest and play. It wasn’t a bad thing; I quite enjoyed it – loads of sleep, loads of chilling out. It could be plenty worse. It forced me to slow down. It meant I couldn’t keep running, going to China, going up and down motorways. Glandular fever became a blessing in that it forced me to slow down and reappraise the way I was living. Trying to keep my family life in order and playing in all the tournaments took too much out of me. So I missed a couple of tournaments and started to take it easy, and that’s when things got better for me.
In February 2012, I played in the German Masters. That kick-started my season. I felt I had been playing well till then, but I wasn’t getting results. Two years without a victory in a ranking event was a first for me.
I had no problem with the Premier League. That was a tournament made for me. There’s a stopclock, and you have to play a shot every 25 seconds. But because that so obviously benefited my natural game I never counted it as a real victory. The Premier League was almost a given, my banker – and my mortgage paid for the year.
I was so close to an inglorious exit in the first round of the German Masters. I was 4-0 down to Andrew Higginson and thought, I’m done for here; start the car. I’ve lost it. I obviously haven’t got it in me to win these important tournaments any more. The German is a ranking event, which means it’s classed as a major, whereas the Premier League is an invitation event so they often invite people like Jimmy White and Steve Davis just to put bums on seats. No disrespect to them (they are two of my heroes, after all) but they are past their best. It was seen as Barry Hearn’s favourites who were invited to that, whereas a ranking event is open to all the top players in the world. Everybody wants ranking titles on their CV, the World and the UK being the most prestigious. But I’d just lost the ability to win them. Or so I thought.
So I was 4-0 down, first to five. And I thought, either the standard’s getting really high or I’ve lost it. Or a combination of both. I’d been working with the sports psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters so I didn’t panic. I thought I was cueing well. I’d had a couple of chances, but not made the most of them. Rather than panic or get the hump, I thought, no, I’m here, I’m playing okay, a crowd of 2,500, just try to enjoy the experience. If you get beaten 5-0, you get beaten 5-0, but just give it your best, and that was the stuff I was working on with Steve Peters. Stay patient, and if I get a chance to put some pressure on the fella, you never know what’s going to happen.
I won one frame to go 4-1, then I won another. And I won them in one visit, and quickly, which is always good for morale. So at 4-2 I thought, if he’s going to twitch he’s going to twitch now. It got to 4-3, and then he had a chance – he was on a 60-odd break, and there was a red over the hole, and I thought, well, I’m done now. Fuck, I’ve got beaten in another ranking event early doors. Then he kissed the green and four-ball snookered himself on the red over a hole. Unbelievable. You would have got odds of 1,000 to one on him doing that. I’ve got a bit of a chance here, I said to myself. But I was still 60 down, 4-3 down, and there was 67 on the table. So if he gets on the red he’s 61 ahead, 59 on the table and I’m out.
But he didn’t pot that red. I then got a good long one, cleared up, 4-4, and I thought, bloody hell! Then I won the last comfortably. So I got through a match I was dead and buried in. He was gutted. I shook his hand, and he was gone. Andrew’s a good player ranked in the 20s. All these players coming through these days can beat the best at any time. Andrew looked like he was going to fall over. He was in a daze, and I was so pumped up. He was deflated, and I was elated. I thought, wow, that was a touch! Four-nil down, one ball from going out: you couldn’t have written it.
When I got through to the quarters in Germany I thought that was a result because for two years all I’d been doing was last 16 at best. And then I got to the semi, and I thought, fuck I’m near a final. It was a shitty match against Stephen Lee; one of the only matches that season I felt: ‘I want out of here, I’ve had enough, count me out, I’d rather get home and watch it on the telly.’ Somehow I got through that match. I was there for the taking, but Stephen sat on the fence and once it got close I reckoned if he’s not been able to beat me yet and I’ve got this far then there’s a good chance I’m going to win.
I got through to the final against Stephen Maguire and I thought, if I’m going to play in the final like I did in the semis, it’s going to be a long day. At the interval I was 3-1 down – Maguire had had three century breaks, basically hadn’t missed a ball, and I managed to nick a frame. And I thought, I’ve done well, I was 3-1 down, but I’d had a result. Was it always going to be like this against modern players? Every time you go out there you’re going to get your head punched about. Unless you make three centuries you’ve not got a chance.
Then I thought, no, just enjoy it, give it your best. That’s all you can do. And I managed to come out of the session 5-3 down, which was also a result. It could easily have been 8-0 or 7-1, so I’d avoided a whitewash and there was still a game on for the evening session. I’d avoided the embarrassment of getting absolutely hammered and having to come out 7-1 down; I’d done alright. I’d given everything, and there was no more meat on the bone.
Stephen played so brilliantly he probably felt disappointed going in only 5-3 up. He’d not made as much of it as he could have done, so maybe he was the one in the dressing room beating himself up. I came out in the evening and got to 6-6. It wasn’t the best snooker in the world, but I came in and asked myself, how did I get to 6-6? I’d been outplayed all over the place. Then we came out for the last session and he started missing a few, and I was thinking, game on, it’s the best of five now, I fancy this. I started to feel I was in charge. That’s the thing about snooker, any sport really: so much is psychology – and the psychology swings one way then the other by the second. So I’d taken a battering all day long and then my rewards came later in the match, when you want it to come good for you.
I was 8-6 up, on the verge of winning, then I played a bad positional shot. I was convinced I’d just thrown it away. I’m on a 40-odd break, in my mind I’ve won the match, I’m doing the winner’s speech and, boom, he clears up. And I was thinking: ‘Oh no, I’ve done it again, got carried away in the moment.’ I wasn’t used to winning, and I tensed a bit. So it went 8-7. Eventually I potted the blue to win it 9-7, and I was twitching like mad. My backhand was shaking like a leaf, my arse was pooping all over the gaffe, 2,500 people in the house, and I was, like, get me out of here; this isn’t the place to crumble and fall apart.
I’d not been so nervous since a semi-final in the World Championship against Stephen Hendry in 2002. The German Masters is a tournament that loads of snooker fans aren’t even aware of, but this was huge for me. Huge. When the blue went in, I couldn’t believe it. I was shaking so much I thought I’d miss it by a foot. At first I thought, don’t worry about potting, just get the white safe. Then I told myself, don’t think like that, that’s not how a champion thinks. A champion thinks: ‘That’s going in the hole, pot the blue and get on to the pink; that’s the shot.’ Embrace the moment, I told myself. This is what top sport is about, this is how you separate yourself from the pack. You grab these opportunities, and commit.
I went back to my chair and I was gone. Exhausted. I thought, I’ve won a tournament, a proper ranking event. After coming out of the Priory and winning the Champions Cup, it was the greatest turning point for me since I’d started playing professionally. That was so massive in 2001 because I’d been drinking and puffing my head off for seven years and I’d come out clean and won this tournament, and I thought, I’m enjoying this, I’ve got a chance. After winning the German last year I felt the same, and I never thought I’d recapture that feeling. I’d been down for more than two years, I’d been knocked by everyone in the game, and I’d proved I still had it in me. I won about €50,000 – not a massive amount, but that was irrelevant.
Not winning for two years had a big impact on me financially. Not just the prize money. When I started to lose all the time, the sponsor money disappeared or went down. Snooker was unrecognisable financially from when I started. Back in the days of Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor the standard was nowhere near as high, but anyone in the top 30 could make a decent living out of the game. After all, the tournaments were on telly, watched by millions, tens of millions even, and the tobacco sponsors queued up to put their name on trophies. But the game was hit by that double whammy: cigarette sponsorship was banned and the viewing figures fell away.
When I stopped winning I went from earning £750,000 a year to £150,000. Listen: it’s still decent money, but once you subtract the costs of travelling and hotels, managers and agents, believe me it’s not impressive. Actually, it seemed to bother my accountant more than me – he’d go, hold on, what’s going on here. He couldn’t get his head around it.
But as far as my lifestyle went, it never affected me because I didn’t live an extravagant life anyway. I had my odd mad moment, like when I bought a Ferrari on the spur of the moment, and flogged it just as quickly at a fair old loss when I realised Ferraris are not me. I had a nice house and car, but I didn’t really go out – all I did was run and play snooker. My running trainers are the most important things I own. I feel lucky in that I’ve never had to earn a huge amount to maintain a lifestyle. I’ve never felt that pressure because I’ve never wanted that lifestyle.
So it was the winning rather than the money that was always going to be the big thing for me.
And I’d finally won another ranking event. It was massive because I thought it was over for me. Before Dad came out of prison in 2010 I had this fear that once he was out I’d never win another tournament. I don’t know why. The mind does daft things. When I was a kid I’d always found it difficult to win when he came to watch me, and that was probably in the back of my mind. But there was something else, too. I wanted to spend time with him, and psychologically I’d resigned myself to becoming a bit-part player and losing my focus. I knew I had to make up for lost time. I didn’t want to be away, living out of a suitcase and not seeing him.
I’d waited 18 years, and there’s no point waiting that long then when he comes out not to enjoy having a fry-up, watching a bit of Sky and a bit of boxing, and being there for him. I’d been there for him all that time he was in prison, and now I wanted to be part of his life. It was important that when he came out I was there to support him.
When I was in rehab in 2000 I had to read out my life story; one of the fellas in there was called Max – we never really got on, but he gave me one of the most important bits of feedback I got there. When you read your life story out, they share back what they think is going on, and Max, he just said to me: ‘It looks as if you’re counting down the days till your dad comes home.’ And he was right. It’s like when you put your mind to winning a tournament; I told myself I was doing it for him to keep him going. Every time he saw me on the telly he said it was like having a visit, and I thought, if that’s the most exciting part of his life in prison I couldn’t jack it in even though I wasn’t always in love with the game. The most important reason to keep playing was to keep Dad going.
I always knew Dad wanted the best for me; that he’d do anything for me as a child to give me the better chance of success. So I always felt he was largely to thank for my success. He taught me everything I knew, kept my feet on the ground, gave me the best opportunity, the best cues, the best practice facilities and best practice partners, and that needed paying back. When Dad was in jail I felt we were in it together. I wasn’t about to abandon him when I was out here. I always felt it was a team effort – me, Dad, Mum, and my sister Danielle.
In those two years I also thought that was the end of my time as a champion because it is the age when most champions stop winning. Stephen Hendry won his last major tournament when he was around 34, but you can forgive him because he crammed so much into such a short amount of time, just like tennis player Pete Sampras did. Maybe he burnt out a bit quicker than his talent deserved as a result. I’ve had gaps where I’ve still played but not with the same intensity as somebody like Hendry would, and that’s probably why I’ve been able to continue going over a longer period of time.
But sport is a business as much as anything else, and you have to look at things practically – when will I find my days numbered? Can I keep going on till I’m 40? It’s my job, it’s my life, it’s what I like to do, and you want a sense of when it’s going to come to an end. In your own mind you’re trying to prepare yourself for it, and you can only go by the people who went before you. That’s all there is – history. But in my heart I didn’t feel I was coming to the end. I still felt confident in my own game.
At other times I felt I was past my sell-by. This was a new era of players, and I was deluding myself. I questioned the type of game I was playing and whether it was equipped to deal with the new generation. I told myself that even though I thought I was playing an aggressive game, the new players were looking at me thinking, who is this old codger? Perhaps it was like me playing Terry Griffiths 20 years ago; he’d so rarely take a risk. And maybe they were looking at me in the same light, going: ‘This Ronnie O’Sullivan, he’s a bit too negative for me. He don’t fancy the job.’ I was getting paranoid.
I did have to reinvent myself as a player because I felt I was on the back foot against a lot of these players; that they were more aggressive to me, playing a different game. When I started out, the likes of Steve Davis were more careful. They wouldn’t just break the balls open. They were more percentage players whereas now, even though they don’t miss much, they’re still percentage players; they just go for harder shots and get them. Whereas years ago you would have thought a ball is safe, today’s players now think, well, that’s my chance. Against the likes of Steve Davis you knew you might get beat but you wouldn’t get blown away. So you could start slowly and work your way into a match. With these guys, there’s none of that. As I said, I was 4-0 down to Higginson, and I’d not done a lot wrong. Twenty years ago he would have won a lot of tournaments.
All the new generation are aggressive – perhaps 30 of them who, on their day, could beat anybody. When I started out there were seven or eight who could kill you off, but you’d never meet them till the quarter-finals; now you’re getting them first round and you’re thinking: ‘Cor blimey, I don’t fancy this geeza!’
It’s funny how the standard has gone up so much while the incentive to play the game has fallen so much. Twenty years ago you could get close on 20 million people watching the World Championship final in the UK, but nowadays you’d be lucky to get five million. There was the tobacco advertising, and money in the game, and the financial rewards were massive. But this new generation were probably the ones watching it back then. It was a big sport, a glamorous sport. Perhaps I’m reaping what I sowed. People tell me my game encouraged others to come into the game and play aggressively and fast.
So I changed a few things in my game, developed a few new shots. My two lean years were partly down to me not playing well and partly down to problems off the table. In the 2011 World Championship I was ready to give up, then I was introduced to Steve Peters and he turned my thinking around. I rediscovered my passion for the game, and my attitude was a thousand times better than it had ever been before.
After working with Dr Steve for a while, I didn’t feel I ever gave up in matches. If I lost, it was just because the other guy had played better on the day and that was a lot easier to live with. It wasn’t easy because you then thought, well, I gave it my best and still lost, but it was easier. There was a transition period where I changed my game. I’m quite a good student of the sport, and I watched other players and thought that to move on to another level and last another few years I needed to improve certain areas of my game. The new players pot with such ease. Before, players made it look like hard work. The new bunch made it look like every ball was over the hole: I needed to start thinking like that. I changed my grip and technique and started committing to the shot – if I was going to miss I was going to miss positively. I wasn’t going to twitch them in any more.
John Higgins was my yardstick. You looked at him and thought, he’s doing a lot of things right; then Judd Trump came along, and he does a lot of things right as well. Neil Robertson was another big factor, and Ding Junhui. If you look at their technique, all four have similarities: they play the same sort of shots and the balls break the same.
There’s a science to it. A lot of it is just how they release the cue; their timing, their grip, their balance. They are power players; they pot a red, get the right angle and go into that pack and the white will just accelerate through the balls. With one shot the balls are at their mercy. Years ago they were accurate, but they didn’t have that one shot that could win them the game. With a lot of players you can see technical weaknesses, and you know they will break down, but with this four you look at them and think there’s not a lot that could go wrong with them. Over 17 days or a season of course they’ll lose matches, but they’ll be 85–90 per cent most of the year round and I thought that for me to compete with those players I had to learn off them. I had to learn how to play as if I could win matches with one shot. To play the aggressive game you might give away a few chances, and it might be the wrong shot to go for, but my logic was that the game I was going to play would be more risky but it would also give much more of a message to the opponent: if you miss, I probably won’t.
In a way it’s counter-intuitive. As you get older the tendency is to become more conservative and take fewer risks. I was aware of what happened to Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry. I think Davis would have been better if he’d tried to match Hendry at his own game; he had the ability to do that, but he was so stuck in his ways. If he’s convinced of something he ain’t going to change, which is probably why he won so often. But I also believe you’ve got to look at the competition and think, if I’m going to move on I need to adapt and realise that there’ll always be someone coming up behind me who will take the game to the next level. And the only way to stay in the game was to go with them and not get stuck behind.
When I was losing all the time, people’s behaviour changed towards me. They were nicer to me, and I hated that. They were talking to me. Once you’re not a threat, people want to be your friend. There are certain players on the circuit who are not like that – Matthew Stevens, Neil Robertson, Ding Junhui, Stephen Hendry, Steve Davis. They’re always the same whether you’re winning or not. But some players, and their managers and friends, change.
They’d be chatting away like they were your friend, then all of a sudden, when I started to win, you could smell their change of attitude. You’d sense you were on your own again. But if I had the choice I’d much rather be on my own and be a winner than be a loser and have: ‘Hello, lads, where you going for dinner tonight? Yeah, yeah, great, and what day you going to China? When you get there we’ll meet up.’ All that bollocks. That’s the loser’s mentality. They’re good in a group, they like to banter with each other. But Hendry never bantered with people, Steve Davis never bantered with people, John Higgins doesn’t banter with people, and I’d never bantered with people. I was there to do a job, and yet I felt I’d become one of the banterers; one of the mob that would sit there and talk bollocks for three or four hours because that’s where the level of my game had gone to.
I wasn’t winning tournaments, and I felt I was just one of those players there to make up the numbers. I was not a threat to the real contenders. Hendry was an assassin. Davis was an assassin. At my best, I’m an assassin. We’re not there to be mates with anybody. There’s nothing worse than travelling 13 hours to China when you feel you’re just making up the numbers.
When I won the tournament in Germany, the other players knew how important it was to me. I’m not sure I realised how important it was till I played in the next tournament, the Welsh Open. I went there, thinking, I’m still not cueing that well, but I’ve got a chance. In the first round I beat Marco Fu 4-2, and Marco has always been a bogeyman for me. Every time he sees me, he rubs his hands together and goes: ‘Ah, lovely, I’ve got Ronnie in the first round, I’m bound to play well.’ But now I thought I’d won in Germany and the pressure was off me. Beating Fu is like beating a Higgins or a Hendry because he always plays out of his nut against me. Then I beat Mark Williams 4-1, again not playing great but competing. No matter how badly someone like him plays, he always has that inner belief, that steel, that he can win. He was playing well then, so that was a result.
At this stage it was touch and go whether I’d qualify for the World Championship. I’d sunk to around 20th in the world rankings because I’d won so few world-ranking points for a couple of years, and every tournament I found myself slipping down the world rankings. When Barry Hearn came in he changed the world-ranking system. Before that you basically had your spot and pretty much stayed there the whole season. Then, when Barry came in, the rankings changed every two or three tournaments. He introduced loads of new events and every point mattered.
In the Welsh, I beat Judd Trump in the quarter-finals, and that was another turning point. He was one of the leading players coming through the ranks, got to the World Championship final and was playing with huge confidence. I thought, I’m not going to play cagey snooker, I’m going out to give it a go. And that’s how it went. I went bang! Long red. Eighty. He went, bang! Long red. Eighty. I went bang! Long red. One hundred. He went bang! Seventy. And I thought, 2-2, we’re having a row here, this is good! I’m enjoying this. Then, at the interval it goes 3-2 to me in another single visit, then 3-3 with another 70 odd. And I’m thinking, wow, he’s hit me and I’ve hit him with everything. There came a point when he changed his game. He started playing shots he wouldn’t normally. He started to not go for his shots, waiting for me to make mistakes. And I thought, whether I win or lose this match there’s a chink in the armour and I’ve found it. Psychologically, he’s no longer the machine everybody thought he was going to be. I know John Higgins beat him in the 2011 World Championship final, but that’s how he had felt to me till then. From then on he didn’t feel like a Higgins or Hendry to me – with those two I felt there was no chink. You might beat them, but there was never a chink.
You always measure yourself against the top four or five players, and to get to an important stage of a tournament and feel that you’ve got the edge on someone like Judd felt good. I thought, if you’re not going to go for your shots I will, and I went bang bang bang bang, thank you very much, 5-3. And I got through a match that I thought I wouldn’t be able to – I was 36, he was 22, and I didn’t think I’d be able to keep up with him. If that was the standard, I didn’t know whether I had the stamina or consistency. But the same thing happened that had against Maguire. When it got to 6-6 he started playing cautiously. It’s alright playing the big shots in practice, and in the early stages of the match, but when it really matters is in the final stages of a big tournament.
Graham Dott or Mark Selby at 3-3 would have been a tougher match than Judd Trump at 3-3. Although Judd plays a lot more aggressive, attractive snooker, at 3-3 you don’t want to be playing Selby or Dott; you’d rather be playing Trump. Sure, he can blow you away, but if you stick to him you’ve got a chance. And nobody can blow everybody away. I don’t care if you’re Barcelona; Manchester United can hold on to you, and if you get to 80 minutes, you’re still 0-0 and you twitch, they’ll nick a goal because they’re used to it and they believe in themselves. Boom, miskick, boom, through the goalie’s legs, Barcelona beaten. And snooker, or any sport for that matter, is no different. So Trump was someone to measure myself against. And I thought, okay, I might not be able to be as aggressive but I’m trying to play that game – or play the game I can play to feel I can compete with them – and when it came to it I fancied the job. Sure, I was nervous against Maguire and Trump, but the more I got into it the more I thought the odds were in my favour.
I got to the semis and played Selby. We nickname him the Torturer. Just as when you play Trump and you play a nice, open game, you enjoy it, and you know you’re either going to get smashed off the table or have a good game, but you’re going to play the shots you like to play at a nice tempo, so it was the very opposite with Selby. I didn’t know my arse from my elbow, I couldn’t cue, I didn’t feel like a snooker player because he plays a game in which, unless you match him in certain areas and score, he’s going to beat you.
I was matching him in the safety, but when I got in the balls I wasn’t scoring, and I lost 6-2. But I came off and thought, well, at least he didn’t aggravate me like he did in the past. With a lot of people, if you respect their game you don’t mind losing to them, but there are certain players you don’t appreciate. They’re still very good and get the job done, so you have to respect them for that, but it is painful. Selby is the Torturer, just like Peter Ebdon (I love Psycho – that’s what Dad nicknamed Ebdon – but he’ll be the first to admit he likes to slowly strangle his opponents). Tactically, there is probably no one better than Selby in the game. He’s prepared to play a lot of long frames – he’s happy to take five hours to play five frames. But that’s no good to me. Every punter’s paid their money, and I feel like I’ve robbed them. They’ve come to see me play, and if I’ve given them ten 50-minute frames I feel shit, and want to go home and kill myself.
Selby and I have different mentalities. His way is not wrong, my way is not right; we just have different philosophies. A lot of people don’t like playing him. He tortured Graham Dott, he tortured Neil Robertson in the Masters, he tortured Sean Murphy. They probably wouldn’t admit it, but, watching, it was evident they were finding it hard going. And in some way I got satisfaction out of that because in the past I’d played him in the Masters and in the Welsh, and people went: ‘See, Ronnie doesn’t like this kind of player’, but I still managed to get a couple of wins over him. I beat him 9-8 in the UK, and had a maxi. We’ve had tough matches, and I’ve got a certain amount of respect for the way he goes around getting a result. John Parrott’s got the best name for him: Stickability Selby. He’ll stick to you no matter how well you play. Selby does have issues with his cue action, though; his belief in his game. He has anxiety within himself. I don’t think he’s enjoying his game even though he’s getting the results. I don’t think he’s entirely happy with the way he hits the ball. He’s had about 20 different cue actions in the past 10 years, but, again, I take my hat off to someone who’s prepared to change their game to become a better player. It shows that he loves the sport he’s playing.
There was one match I played him where I just counted the dots on the spoon repeatedly. There were 108 dots on the spoon, and every time I lost count I went back to the beginning because it was difficult to watch; difficult to get any rhythm against him. That was the 2008 UK Championships and I was in good form then. But I found myself counting the dots because you’re not allowed to go out there and read a magazine or put a towel over your head, or do this and that, so I thought, fuck it, I’ll count the dots. I’d have found something in that arena to distract me. Everybody went, he’s lost the plot: ‘Ronnie’s counting the dots.’ But they didn’t have to get in there and play him. Now they are playing him and crumbling, so maybe they should look back to those earlier matches and say: ‘Well, Ronnie did well, and you can understand why he counted those dots.’
I pulled out of Ireland. I had a bad back and shouldn’t really have got on the plane in the first place. To make matters worse, I was travelling on Ryanair – never a pleasant experience. You know they’re out to catch you whenever they can – it’s one of those airlines that just wants to make something from your misfortune. I was the last one on the plane with my mate Gay Robbie. We got on the plane and there were six spare seats together, and I thought, happy days, we’ll sit there. As we got on the Ryanair fella is going: ‘Anybody who would like the extra seats that are free it will be an extra ten euros.’ And I’m going: ‘Ten euros! That’s Arthur Daley flogging you a seat for an extra ten euros.’ Anyway, I went, I’ll have ’em, and the geeza then goes: ‘No, you can’t have them.’
So I just went: ‘Right, we’re getting off, I’ve had enough of this, I don’t want to travel.’ I said: ‘Thank you very much, we’re getting off the plane, you’ve done me a favour. I’m in no state to travel, my back’s in spasm, I’m off. I haven’t got the hump, happy days, I’m going home, see you later.’ So I got off the plane, rang my manager and told him I was going home.
The next tournament was China. I’d not played a tournament for a month and I felt a bit rusty. I went 4-2 down to Marcus Campbell, and ended up winning the match 5-4. Don’t know how, but I did. Then I beat Mark Williams 5-1 in the next round, didn’t play great, but was pretty match-sharp because I’d won the German and got to the semis of the Welsh. Then I played Maguire in the quarters and he beat me 5-4. Again, he outplayed me in the beginning, but I held on and it went 4-4, and I felt I was beginning to find my game at the right time. I had a fairly simple shot to stun in to win, but I decided to come off a cushion, then missed a red, we had to respot the black and he potted it. I lost the match, but came out thinking I could have had that, and again I felt I’d done well. You can’t win every event and sometimes you have to save your wins for the right time. So win, semi, quarter, and I was thinking, I’m back. I felt I’d earned my right to play again.
I was playing in a lot of the small PTC events that Barry Hearn had introduced. This is how Barry was putting on more games – not televised, but it meant players were getting more match practice. If you got to the quarters you got a grand, if you got to the semis you got £2,500, 10 grand for the winner, so there wasn’t much money in it, but there were ranking points. If I hadn’t gone to those PTC events I would have had to qualify for Sheffield, and I really didn’t fancy that. Barry had us by the bollocks – as I’ve said, we had to turn up for the minor events to qualify for the bigger ones.
I came in at number 16 and just qualified for the World Championship, so I didn’t have to play qualifiers. That had been my goal – to keep my top 16 ranking – and I’d just about made it. I’d won a few of the PTC events, even ended up number one on those rankings, so my form was decent. It’s just that I hadn’t done it in the major events till Germany. But by then I thought, whatever happens at Sheffield, I’m back, I’ve had a great season. I’d proved to myself that I deserved to be on the circuit, that I was still a top 16 player.