Ronnie O’Sullivan fears he won’t win another World Snooker Championship & reveals ‘I don’t think I’ve got another in me’
RONNIE O’SULLIVAN has relived this week the mental and emotional torture he suffered during his last exhausting Crucible triumph.
And if he is being completely honest, having seen how deep in the trenches you have to dig to succeed, he does not think he has it in him to be victorious for an eighth time.
The Rocket’s documentary – The Edge of Everything – is out on Prime Video tomorrow and offers a unique insight into a complex and complicated character.
It charts the “stage fright” he endured behind-the-scenes during his record-equalling seventh World Snooker Championship win in the spring of 2022.
Though he was unquestionably the best player on the table, he experienced plenty of low moments, doubts and turbulent feelings in the Sheffield venue dressing room.
Sitting in a plush London hotel suite an hour or so before Tuesday’s premiere, O’Sullivan 47, was asked if another world crown was worth the squeeze over 17 tortuous days in South Yorkshire.
He replied: “Probably not, to be honest with you.
“I’m sure I’ll pitch up and play again, whether I’ve got another one in me I don’t know.
“If I’m being brutally honest, I don’t think I’ve got another one in me.
“But I thought that in 2011 and I’ve won a few since then, so it’s strange how things can turn out differently.”
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Having a camera crew follow him round for the climax of the 2021-22 season acted as a catalyst for his magical success when finally matched Stephen Hendry’s 1999 world tally.
O’Sullivan said: “If you haven’t won the World Championship then yeah it’s worth it.
“But when I got to four titles in 2012, I thought that’s enough. I’m quite happy with that. It hasn’t been a total failure. To get to seven is great.
“If I was ultra-critical and hard on myself then I could possibly have got to double figures if I hadn’t lost those earlier years and things had been different in my private life.
“You have got to think: Do I really need this? Do I really need another World Championship? The answer is, for me, no.
“But once I’d let the cameras in I wasn’t going to crumble and give a half-hearted display, that was never going to happen.”
In terms of how long left he has in the professional game, O’Sullivan reckons he has “got another five years” but “I could do 10 if I wanted”, which would take him to his late 50s.
O’Sullivan – who will play in the UK Championship in York next week – may not have felt comfortable with the premiere spotlight.
But he shared the Leicester Square stage with ex-England football captain David Beckham, 48, who was the film’s executive producer.
The pair grew up in the same East End/Essex locality and once shared a cup of tea and some frames years ago at O’Sullivan family home.
World No.1 and snooker legend said: “We met each other in Charlie Chan restaurant in Manchester and we got chatting away.
“This was before he scored THAT goal (against Wimbledon in 1996).
“I stayed with him for 2-3 days and his fame was off the scale.
“Him and Ryan Giggs, it was scary. They were like the Beatles, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life and I’m not really cut out for that sort of thing.
“I run for the exit at things like that. I spent a couple of days and then I was out of there. It was on another level.”