Ronnie O’Sullivan banned his own dad from the Crucible for World Sn…

Ronnie O’Sullivan has admitted he blocked his dad from coming to one of his matches at the World Snooker Championship last year due to the pressure he would’ve felt to win. O’Sullivan Sr missed a large chunk of his son’s incredibly successful career due to an 18-year stint in jail for stabbing Bruce Bryan to death.

But O’Sullivan had his dad, who was released in 2010, at the Crucible for the final last year as he became the oldest world champion in history. His seventh title in Sheffield also saw him match the great Stephen Hendry. However, the 47-year-old – who crashed out this year to finalist Luca Brecel in the quarter-finals – has revealed that earlier in the tournament he actually refused to let his father into the iconic venue.

In an extract published by The Times from his new book, Unbreakable, which comes out next month, O’Sullivan recounts: “Here’s a scene frozen in time for you. We’re in Sheffield for the World Championships. It’s 2022, post-Covid, big crowds in. An evening session, so everyone’s piling in through the foyer, grabbing their drinks, hurrying through to their seats.

“It’s quiet outside now. Barely anyone on Tudor Square, the spring light in the sky fading, streetlights coming on. Just one bloke, in his late sixties. Black waterproof coat on, dark blue woolly hat. Grey goatee, trimmed short.

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“He’s pacing up and down. From the front door of the theatre all the way out to Surrey Street, then turning on his heels and coming back past the Sheffield Library Theatre. Loop after loop, staring at his phone, shouting every now and then.

“Ignoring the few other people walking past, although there’s something about his manner that says he doesn’t want interrupting. This is my dad. Ronnie O’Sullivan Sr. Big Ron. He’ll get to watch my match later.

“He’s recorded it, and when he gets back to the hotel, he’ll watch the bits when I’m at the table, pause it when my opponent comes in, make himself a cup of tea and then forward until they’re done at the table and then watch me again.

“But I won’t let him in the venue, not until the match is done. It’s too much for me. I remember when I was a kid, eight years old and nine, and his presence at a competition used to put so much pressure on me. If I missed a shot I could hear his response – ‘You’re throwing it away…’

“He loved watching me practice. Him and his mates in the snooker club, him holding court as always but almost never taking his eyes off me. He’d talk to me afterwards like I was a boxer, like his uncles had been. ‘Take his f***ing head off, son!’

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“The nerves would kill me. Over a shot thinking, I don’t want to miss this, because Dad will get the hump. By the age of 12 we’d worked it out. When I’m playing, you go elsewhere. And it worked, because when I was 12, I started winning everything. I knew it then. You’re not good for me, in here.”

O’Sullivan was just 16 years old when his dad was jailed for murder in 1992. O’Sullivan Sr was behind bars for all of his first three World Championship triumphs in 2001, 2004 and 2008.

The world No 1 further admits in the excerpt that he went “off the rails” after his dad was sentenced. He added: “I felt like I’d lost my spine when he went. My coach, my driving force; my idol, really. At 15 years old I felt like the complete player.

“Everything was geared towards success. I was going to be Tiger Woods, I was going to be Mike Tyson. Then all of a sudden, overnight, it fell apart, and I was lost and utterly bewildered. How am I going to get through this?

“I used to watch Tiger Woods in his younger years. The first person he hugged after every major win, after his caddy, was his dad. It was like he was doing it for Earl as much as for himself. And that was the same as me, when Dad was away. I couldn’t put my cue down in victory and hug him. But I could picture him in front of his little TV in his cell, jumping around and whooping, shouting to all his mates on the wing that his boy had done it again.”

O’Sullivan Sr joined in the celebrations after his son’s seventh world title last year. The younger Ronnie later revealed to Eurosport documentary Seventh Heaven that his father told him going out on stage for pictures with the snooker icon and the trophy was the best moment of his life.

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