April 6, 2026
Shaun Murphy - Part 1 (Hardship, Hunger, and the First Magic)
In this first installment of our five-part conversation with Shaun Murphy, the snooker great takes us back to the beginning and opens up about the difficult early years that shaped both the man and the champion. Long before becoming a World Champion and one of snooker’s elite Triple Crown winners, Shaun was a young boy whose family life changed dramatically after financial collapse turned comfort into uncertainty almost overnight. What followed was hardship, hustle, and a growing realization that snooker might become far more than a pastime.
Shaun recalls the family’s struggle after his father left a successful career, the loss of their home and security, and the way small junior winnings from snooker events began helping the family survive. He shares the charming story of asking Santa for a Commodore 64 and finding instead a little Steve Davis snooker table that would alter the course of his life. From there came the obsession: long hours at the club, a century break as a 10-year-old, and a fierce desire not for prize money, but for medals, trophies, and mastery.
This episode also explores the key influences in Shaun’s early development, including his father’s determined guidance and the profound impact of Mark Wildman, whose knowledge of billiards, snooker, and three-cushion gave Shaun a deeper education in cue sports than most young players could ever imagine. Along the way, Shaun reflects on leaving school at 13, turning professional at 15, and learning that raw attacking talent alone would not be enough in a grown man’s game.
Part 1 is the origin story of “The Magician” — a story of adversity, discipline, curiosity, and the first sparks of greatness.
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Music by Lyrium.
About
"Legends of the Cue" is a pool history podcast featuring interviews with Pool Hall of Fame members, winners of major championships and other people of influence in and around pocket billiards. We also plan to highlight memorable pool brands, events and venues. Focusing on the positive aspects of the sport, we aim to create and provide an engaging and timeless repository of content that listeners can enjoy now and forever. Co-hosted by WPBA and BCA Hall of Fame member Allison Fisher, Mosconi Cup player and captain Mark Wilson, our podcast focuses on telling the life stories of pool's greatest, in their voices. Join Allison, Mark and Mike Gonzalez for “Legends of the Cue.”
WEBVTT
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Welcome to another edition of Legends of the Q and Mark Wilson.
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We have a stoker player with us today.
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And I will say that my mark, I'm not a snooker guy, by the way, you know that, but my mark of a fine and great snooker player is if you can find their name on the wall at Formby Golf Club, you must be somebody.
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You know, I couldn't be more excited to uh have somebody on our show that Steve Davis declares as the greatest uh snooker queuing in the business.
00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:46.000
So really looking forward to this.
00:00:47.039 --> 00:00:52.399
Yeah, this is the first time on our podcast that we're interviewing somebody from my side of the pond.
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I'm delighted and honored that he's joining us.
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He's one of the finest queuists on the planet, hence his nickname, the magician.
00:00:59.759 --> 00:01:08.879
He's a world champion and one of only 11 winners of the Triple Crown Club, winning the World Championships, the UK Championships, and the Masters.
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Please welcome Sean Murphy.
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Guys, great to be here.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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Thank you, Sean.
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We're delighted to have you here.
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Yes, Sean, thanks for joining us.
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We've been working on this for a while.
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I'm glad we finally nailed you down because you're uh still actively competing, unlike most of our previous guests.
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And uh it's nice to have you.
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My reference to Formby is uh something I heard from a friend of mine, Ian Jampson, who you may know at Formby Golf Club.
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I've played Snooker there, and I think your name is on the wall, is it not?
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Well, a bit of inside information here.
00:01:44.799 --> 00:01:47.120
It's definitely on the wall as a potential member.
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I'm on the waiting list to join Formby Golf Club.
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Well, congrats.
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Um and uh in fact, the golf club is at the bottom of my garden.
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So it it taunts me on a daily basis.
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Um You're not a member here, you can't play.
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You're not a member here, you can't come and play.
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I'm allowed to play there with a member six times a year maximum.
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I did a snooker exhibition myself for them about 18 months ago in their beautiful snooker room as you referred to.
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John Parrott, former World Snooker Champion of 1991, is a member there.
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He lives 400 yards from my house.
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Really?
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And I'm waiting for that exception to be made and that I can join, but no such there's been nothing forecoming as of yet.
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I need a I need another pandemic to clear the list.
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I can't believe that.
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John can't I John can't get you in.
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That's unbelievable.
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Well, as we know, Alison, you know, John John would get where Water can't get.
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And if he can't get me in, I've got no chance.
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So it's it's the municipals for me until I joined Thornby.
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I'm just hacking it around the munis, but yeah, golf's definitely way down the list.
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It's certainly not as big a part of my life as it used to be.
00:03:01.919 --> 00:03:04.800
So what do you play what did you play off of at your best?
00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:10.560
My best handicap was plus two, and I got down to plus two about five years ago.
00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:12.240
I kept that for a couple of years.
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It was painful though, because I never won a game against my mates.
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I was always the one paying out at the end of the round.
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It's very hard to give the course shots and win, especially as a an amateur who doesn't play very often.
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Yeah.
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I'm currently off scratch.
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My exact handicap is uh 0.2.
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Okay.
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All right.
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And and Ali and Mark plus two.
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That is fine.
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Yes, I know he's a good golfer.
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Yeah.
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A lot of the super players play golf, right?
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Big thing, yeah.
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I think um and you know, thinking about it, I think that was partly why I got into it, because it was something that a very influential character in my life played socially, a guy called Mark Wildman, who I'm sure we'll talk I'm sure we'll talk about later on.
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But Mark, amongst other things, as well as being chairman of the WPBSA for many years, owned the snooker club where I grew up playing.
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And I think he was just waiting for me to sort of come of age before he was like, Do you fancy going off playing a game of golf?
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Should we go and have, you know, should we just go and have a game of golf?
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And golf ran in the family.
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My dad was a uh golf professional in his in his youth before you know he had to go off and get a real job.
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And yeah, golf was something I kind of was always curious about.
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I took up snooker far earlier than golf.
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And that's that's I think that's why I don't do very well.
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When we go on holiday, when Joe and I go away, you know, we we uh I tend to sit under an umbrella because I've got snooker players' complexion, you know.
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I don't I've not been used to seeing the sun.
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Very, very pale.
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So I tend to burn immediately unless we're golfing, funnily enough.
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Yeah.
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But yeah, well, I've been into golf for a long time.
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Well, you'll get back to the game at some point, I'm sure.
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Yeah, no, I will do, and I do play every year.
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I very, very fortunately get invited to a lot of charity days and corporate days and stuff, and you know, it's nice to get out and play.
00:04:56.319 --> 00:04:58.639
I've never been a big practiser of golf.
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I th I find that I've given so much of myself to practising snooker that the hours required to practice golf and other things, I just haven't got it in me to do that.
00:05:08.959 --> 00:05:15.519
You know, I still practice a hell of a lot for snooker, you know, do hours and hours at home in my snooker room.
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Sure, where would you find the time in the day to then go off and work on other things, you know?
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So snooker's still the snooker's still the main the main force.
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Yeah.
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You don't have to travel far to find great golf around you either.
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That's a pretty nice stretch on the coast there.
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Yeah, it's beautiful, I have to say.
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Yeah, you you're absolutely right.
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You can go in any direction and be on a a worldly.
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I mean, we've got the open here soon, and you know, it's just it's just an amazing part of the country for well, a m an amazing part of the world for golf.
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Yeah, it's a wonderful place, I have to say.
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Well, let's uh let's go back to the very beginning.
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What's your earliest recollections of growing up as a lad in England?
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Pre-snooker, I mean, we we uh my sort of growing up life was a bit mixed.
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My dad had a really good job with Mercedes-Benz.
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He was head of their sales team, their commercial sales team, so that's sort of the trucking department of Mercedes-Benz.
00:06:10.800 --> 00:06:19.120
You know, he would have been selling trucks to the trade, and we had two nice Mercs on the drive and a nice house, and this, that, and the other.
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And unfortunately, you know, he he fancied a a change in direction with his life, and my parents, they took the decision that he would leave that job and they bought a restaurant, and it was the restaurant where he'd done a lot of his meetings, and you know, his typical Italian restaurant in the middle of this bustling town centre, and you thought it would always be a success.
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Unfortunately, in the late 80s, there was a quite a large financial crash in the UK, and we lost the restaurant, we lost the house, and the bank took everything off the family, and we were very, very close.
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It's not it's not an exaggeration to say we were very close to being homeless.
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We we we got the charity of a local businessman who who had a house to rent and he rented it to us at a very, very cheap rate.
00:07:03.360 --> 00:07:06.639
And that was kind of around the same time I sort of took up Snooker, you know.
00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:08.959
It was it all seemed to happen at the same time.
00:07:09.360 --> 00:07:23.439
As I say, when it when I when I took up the game and started playing Snooker, it was a very quickly sort of seen as a this could really sort of be a way out, you know, of of what was a quite a tough upbringing, quite a tough first part of my life.
00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:28.000
I mean, I was only I was nearly nine when I took up Snooker.
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So a lot had happened that was outside of my control.
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As I say, the the sort of decisions that my parents had taken to that point were pretty good, and then one bad decision, you know, it all went wrong, which is, you know, it's totally out of everyone's control.
00:07:43.759 --> 00:07:47.439
And it reminds us that you're only a couple of bad moves away from being in trouble in life, aren't you?
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You know, you could be flying high one minute, and then the next minute life has a different route for you.
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So we would have had a nice lifestyle up until me being about six, and then we lost everything, and it was a difficult time until Snooker came into our life, really.
00:08:04.399 --> 00:08:08.720
And you know, Snooker, Snooker and the opportunities that it brought changed everything.
00:08:08.959 --> 00:08:09.360
Yeah.
00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:14.240
At that young uh of an age, uh, were you cognizant of what was happening?
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Did it really affect you, or or were you kind of oblivious?
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You were just so young and carefree.
00:08:20.560 --> 00:08:25.199
Uh well, I was always a bit of a petrol head at heart, and I I remember asking my dad, where have the cars gone?
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You know, where have our nice cars gone?
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Uh, because we had two.
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We had a, I think we had a you know, a brand new E-Class Mercedes, and my mum had an old sort of E-class Mercedes.
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It was a bit of a classic, and they were taken, you know, one day they were there, one day they weren't.
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The family car went from being this lovely Merck to a transit van, which we we then started doing like um house clearances and antique fairs and car boot sales.
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You know, that's how we made money as a family, and then it became cyclic then.
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The money that we made at those things paid the entry fee for my junior competitions, and the money that I won in these junior competitions helped pay the rent on the house.
00:09:01.519 --> 00:09:02.240
It's amazing.
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It was and it and it was cyclic, you know.
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I and of course I'm only you know 10, 11 years of age at this time.
00:09:07.919 --> 00:09:09.279
I'm totally unaware of that.
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This is happening.
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All I'm bothered about is can I have some money out of my winnings to go and buy a Star Trek model?
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That's what I was into as a kid.
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I'm not too proud to admit it.
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I was the kid who made the Star Trek models and put them with fish wire on the ceiling in my room.
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That's what I lived for.
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I didn't know where the rest of the money went.
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And Snooker as well, I don't, you know, it's quite unique in terms of even as a junior player, as an amateur player, you can earn money.
00:09:34.720 --> 00:09:35.679
That's not common.
00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:50.960
You know, if you win a junior amateur golf event, you might win a sleeve of balls in the shop, but you're not, you're not, you're not getting you're not walking away with 500 pounds or a thousand pounds or whatever, which I which I would have been doing as a 10, 11, 12 year old.
00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:51.919
That's amazing.
00:09:52.399 --> 00:10:00.159
Yeah, but I noticed I noticed in we you know, on some of the references to you, you made a century break at the age of ten, is that correct?
00:10:01.039 --> 00:10:08.879
I was desperate to be we'd heard on the grapevine, I think I was only nine at the time, and we'd heard on the grapevine of this young player called Ronnie O'Sullivan.
00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:10.720
Now you guys might have heard of Ronnie O'Sullivan.
00:10:10.879 --> 00:10:12.399
He he he went on to become quite good.
00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:13.600
Yeah, we both.
00:10:14.399 --> 00:10:15.360
That's what I've heard.
00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:17.120
Um he went on to be a good player.
00:10:17.279 --> 00:10:20.879
But we'd heard anecdotally that he made a century break as a ten-year-old.
00:10:21.039 --> 00:10:25.360
I think m my dad and I had sort of said, Oh, wouldn't it be good to, you know, be ahead of that?
00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:30.879
So I was desperate to make a hunter break in a frame against somebody before my tenth birthday.
00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:35.200
And the low a local queue maker, a guy called Mac Chambers.
00:10:35.519 --> 00:10:36.159
I remember Mac.
00:10:36.559 --> 00:10:36.720
Wow.
00:10:38.480 --> 00:10:39.200
Yes, I do.
00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:48.480
Yeah, he he was he lived in the village next to us, and he said, If you if you ever make a sentry break in a frame, I'll make you a queue free of charge.
00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:49.919
We were like, ooh.
00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:56.240
The the queue I had at the time was like from a jumble sale, you know, it it could have been it could have gone could have come from anywhere.
00:10:58.320 --> 00:11:02.720
And I've made a sentry, I think it was 125 against my dad.
00:11:04.159 --> 00:11:05.840
And it was on table twelve.
00:11:05.919 --> 00:11:07.600
It's funny how you remember these things, isn't it?
00:11:08.080 --> 00:11:14.720
It was on table twelve of Ron's Q Sports, which Allison, you'll remember, you played there many times.
00:11:14.960 --> 00:11:15.120
Yeah.
00:11:17.279 --> 00:11:20.720
And it was 125, I think it was on a Monday night against my dad.
00:11:20.799 --> 00:11:26.080
We'd I'd be picked me up from school and we'd gone to the snooker club, so I made this entry.
00:11:26.240 --> 00:11:29.759
We just missed out on Ronnie's, you know, made it as he was 10.
00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:35.360
I think I was two weeks after my tenth birthday, and I ran down, I remember running downstairs in the club.
00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:38.720
Of course, this is before mobile phones or anything like that.
00:11:39.679 --> 00:11:43.840
Used the club phone, rang Mac Chambers and said, You better get some wood ready, Mac.
00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:45.519
I've just made a hundred break.
00:11:45.679 --> 00:11:49.039
If I can picture that as a 10-year-old, that's unbelievable.
00:11:49.360 --> 00:11:49.679
Yeah.
00:11:49.919 --> 00:11:57.600
That's you know, one thing that sometimes when you see great success stories, they're born out of desperation or tough times.
00:11:57.759 --> 00:12:08.000
And I've seen it uh time and again where the hardship ends up leading to tremendous success that maybe wouldn't have been wrought had it not had that occasion.
00:12:09.840 --> 00:12:12.159
Yeah, and it's a funny one for me personally.
00:12:12.240 --> 00:12:16.159
It's something that I've I've sort of stayed away from having my say.
00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:24.720
But I think as I'm getting a bit older, I'm sort of starting to bleak stories is the wrong word, but you know, starting to be a bit more open about my early life.
00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:30.159
There's a there's a massive misconception out there about me, and I I see it on social media a lot.
00:12:30.320 --> 00:12:39.440
I think a lot of people think that I come from a very wealthy background or grew up with money or had money or and I'm not sure where that comes from.
00:12:39.519 --> 00:12:46.480
I'm not sure why people have made that assumption that I must have come from that wealthy background, because I can assure you I didn't.
00:12:46.639 --> 00:12:48.399
That's not how it was at all.
00:12:48.559 --> 00:12:49.919
But I think you're right, Mark.
00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:51.519
I think yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:56.159
I think sometimes out of those situations, you know, things can blossom and bloom.
00:12:56.240 --> 00:12:58.799
It certainly certainly had created a hunger in me.
00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:02.799
It certainly created that burning fire to make it work.
00:13:04.320 --> 00:13:08.639
I left school, mainstream education, I left school when I was 13.
00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:14.559
I'm not sure what the equivalent is in the States that we call like year nine here in the UK.
00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:17.039
I was 13, never went back to school.
00:13:17.200 --> 00:13:18.399
My education stopped there.
00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:24.320
I took my what we call our GCSEs, and I took those three years early to get them out of the way.
00:13:24.480 --> 00:13:31.039
So I I played full-time professional like snooker, although I wasn't a pro until I was 15.
00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:35.519
I played professional full-time snooker basically from being 13 years of age.
00:13:36.799 --> 00:13:37.039
Wow.
00:13:37.279 --> 00:13:54.000
And yeah, it did those early times, those early mornings carrying washing machines with my dad in car boot sales and auction houses and ducking and diving, trying to make a few quid to pay the entry fees for snooker tournaments, it certainly set a fire, which still burns to this day.
00:13:55.279 --> 00:13:55.840
Very cool.
00:13:56.240 --> 00:13:57.360
Fifteen years old.
00:13:57.600 --> 00:13:59.519
Fifteen years old, you turn pro.
00:14:00.639 --> 00:14:03.759
What does that entail for the people listening over here?
00:14:05.679 --> 00:14:09.840
Well, uh, you know, it the the route to being a pro snooker player has changed many times.
00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:11.840
Before that, it was quite different.
00:14:11.919 --> 00:14:23.279
You had to sort of earn your way and win win a particular qualifying event or earn a tick or earn an event that the governing body deemed worthy enough of calling you a professional.
00:14:23.679 --> 00:14:32.159
WPDSA, which was the world governing body for professional billiards and snooker, actually broke their own rule by allowing me to turn pro at 15.
00:14:32.240 --> 00:14:33.919
You were supposed to be 16.
00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:41.279
And the qualifiers that year, the pro qualifiers, started about a month prior to my 16th birthday.
00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:43.440
So I think they took that into consideration.
00:14:44.159 --> 00:14:51.759
Now, the fact that the chairman owned the snooker club where I practiced on a daily basis may have had something to do with that decision as well.
00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:53.200
I wouldn't like to say.
00:14:53.360 --> 00:14:58.639
But I mean, back then there were hundreds of players on the Pro Tour.
00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:15.840
And so to try and sort of join the pro ranks and get to an event or get to the TV stages of an event where you might see somebody that you recognized, you know, like a Steve Davis or a Stephen Hendry or a Ronnie O'Sullivan, who were all in the top 16 of the rankings at the time.
00:15:16.159 --> 00:15:22.480
Somebody like me just starting out would have to win probably seven matches just to get to the round that they started in.
00:15:23.279 --> 00:15:36.559
So as a young man coming onto the tour, I'd qualified through what they called the UK tour, which was the very, very early stages of what's now the Q tour, where basically if you've got the money, you can pay to go on the Q tour.
00:15:36.639 --> 00:15:39.679
And if you're one of the best players at the end of the season, you might get a pro ticket.
00:15:39.759 --> 00:15:42.320
It was kind of the early formative years of that.
00:15:42.480 --> 00:15:44.720
But it was definitely based on whether you were any good or not.
00:15:44.799 --> 00:15:47.279
You had to win matches to get the ticket.
00:15:47.440 --> 00:15:55.120
My first year on tour, you know, it was almost mathematically impossible for me to keep my tour card halfway through this first season.
00:15:55.440 --> 00:16:00.879
Well, the WPBSA actually moved the goalposts and made it twice as hard for people like me to stay on.
00:16:00.960 --> 00:16:05.759
We missed staying on by, you know, 10 places or something.
00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:09.200
And so it was a very quick dip into the world of professional snooker for me.
00:16:09.279 --> 00:16:13.039
I was a professional for one year from being 15 to sort of 16 and a bit.
00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:17.679
Found it much more difficult than I thought I was going to, I have to say.
00:16:18.399 --> 00:16:23.279
You know, I'd gone from playing kids my age, and it was kids, you know, I didn't really have an amateur career.
00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:24.559
I had a junior career.
00:16:24.720 --> 00:16:25.039
Yeah.
00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:27.679
But I didn't really do the amateur scene.
00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:34.480
I kind of went from being a junior player, a kid, to a professional, you know, in very much a grown-ups world.
00:16:34.559 --> 00:16:43.200
And I played a very, very junior style of snooker, you know, went for everything, very aggressive, no thought of safety or defense.
00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:45.840
Very similar to how I still play, I have to say.
00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:47.759
I still very much like that.
00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:49.200
Yeah, I can't help it.
00:16:49.360 --> 00:16:58.799
But I I just I got picked off by grown men who were used to, you know, snookering the life out of players and and making life difficult.
00:16:58.879 --> 00:17:01.279
I wasn't ready for the pro ranks, if truth be told.
00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:06.720
And I spent another two or three years back on the amateur scene learning how to play properly, I think.
00:17:06.799 --> 00:17:12.000
You know, I I knew that junior style, that very naive, aggressive, going for everything style.
00:17:12.160 --> 00:17:18.240
Whilst it might be entertaining, wasn't gonna pay the bills and it wasn't gonna it wasn't gonna get me the wins, you know.
00:17:18.319 --> 00:17:21.279
It wasn't gonna get me the trophies, which I desperately wanted, you know.
00:17:21.359 --> 00:17:28.160
Having, as I said earlier on, having come from very little, having had no money as a kid, I wasn't playing snooker for money.
00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:30.880
It wasn't about the money that you might get if you won.
00:17:30.960 --> 00:17:32.240
It was about the trophy.
00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:38.799
As a child, it was about the medal, it was about the little medal you might take home after winning this whatever event it was.
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