Ronnie O’Sullivan was tipped to burn out. Yet here he is at 50, chasing record eighth world title

In the mid-1990s, Ronnie O’Sullivan used to wander into the media room between sessions at the World Snooker Championship and have a chat with anyone who seemed friendly.

A teenager for his first three World Championship tournaments, he made it to the semi-finals in 1996 as a 20-year-old and repeated it again in 1998 and 1999 before winning his first of seven titles in 2001.

At that time, Ken Doherty was also on top of the world, winning in 1997 and making it to the final the following year. As Doherty’s career peaked at World Championship level, O’Sullivan was on the rise.

At that time, the pressroom was decorated in the livery of Embassy tobacco, the tournament sponsors. The cramped area was set out in the red and gold colours of the brand and a free bar with both beer and spirits available was set up by a wall on one side.

The tobacco company logo was “Inhale to your heart’s content” and many in the pressroom did just that.

Three female Embassy employees, who worked in shifts and were also kitted out in the brand colours, opened the bar, if memory serves, at 11am and saw to every reporter’s needs for drink and tobacco.

A double vodka and 20 Embassy Signature Superkings delivered to desks as reporters filed copy was part of the daily routine.

Jimmy White, Joe Swail, Fergal O’Brien and Doherty were also regular visitors for the chat about football or just relaxing before returning to the auditorium.

They weren’t availing of the drink and appeared to be there for the company, with Doherty often chatting amiably about anything Manchester United.

By then, O’Sullivan was beginning to develop a reputation and at the 1996 tournament incurred a fine of £20,000 for headbutting an official.

The assault was against tournament assistant press officer Mike Ganley. A disagreement broke out between the pair after O’Sullivan had brought a guest into the pressroom. Whatever sparked off the quarrel, it quickly escalated into a physical attack during which the incident occurred.

Against the odds, O’Sullivan was not immediately thrown out of the championship. Instead, he shipped a two-year suspended sentence with demands for a further £10,000 be given to charity. It was a lucky escape by the young player given the severity of the incident.

Two years later in 1998, as a 22-year-old, O’Sullivan was stripped of his Benson and Hedges Irish Masters title after testing positive for cannabis following his victory over Ken Doherty the previous March. He also forfeited the £61,000 prize money awarded for the 9-3 win.

O’Sullivan has forever been complex and while he may have lacked formal education – turning professional at 16 – he was gifted with intelligence.

His life was bookended at one end by a father who ran a porn empire in London and was sentenced to an 18-year stretch in prison for murder. The other end featured his personal struggles and status as a generational talent in snooker.

“I was depressed because I’d stopped drinking and taking drugs, but I only drank and took drugs in the first place because I was depressed. Ultimately, I’d rather be clean and depressed than on drugs and depressed,” O’Sullivan wrote in his 2013 autobiography, Running.

Even as the shy, accessible player in the pressroom bar, the dark edge O’Sullivan brought to the sport was already being felt. The ill-spirits and addictions, the temper and the often-confused life he led, fought against and articulately spoken about, marked him out as a personality that was too self-destructive to last.

By then he was in a spin cycle, but still managed the fastest ever 147 break at the 1997 World Championship, clearing the table in five minutes and eight seconds in the first round against Mick Price and averaging a potted ball every 8.5 seconds.

O’Sullivan won his seventh world title in 2022 at the age of 46, becoming the oldest Crucible champion when he beat Judd Trump.

His list of snooker records is now so comprehensive that it prompted the BBC to ask this year if there was any record not held by O’Sullivan.

The question arose after he confounded the numbers and exceeded the 147 maximum break with a 153 at the World Open in Yushan, China, in March.

It meant O’Sullivan pocketed the sport’s highest-ever professional break, aged 50.

Having been given a free ball with all the reds on the table, he potted the green as an extra red before adding an opening black. From there O’Sullivan reeled off 15 reds, 13 blacks and two pinks before clearing the final six colours for the 153.

O’Sullivan meets John Higgins in Sheffield for their second-round match on Saturday, having long ago shaken off the image of a blinding comet flashing across the game destined to crash and burn.

Instead, O’Sullivan has emerged as forever the flawed maverick, capricious and wayward, but a survivor.

How he has maintained that longevity is more prosaic than poetic, with his persistence, durability and toughness allowing a personality consistently on a battle footing to endure and thrive.

Now he has also been embraced by timelessness and threatens to put fellow seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry in the rear-view mirror.

Out alone as an eight-time winner would be a journey’s end for some. Maybe not for O’Sullivan, whose most dangerous opponent as far back as the smoke-filled rooms of The Crucible has always been himself.

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