Ronnie O’Sullivan is our greatest sportsman – and the most devastatingly honest

There is a scene in Edge of Everything, the new documentary about Ronnie O’Sullivan, that provides as sharp an analysis as you will ever see of the pressures of top level sport. It is from footage taken in his dressing room during the final of the 2022 World Snooker Championship in Sheffield.

At 46, O’Sullivan is poised to become the oldest winner of the title in history. But as he takes a break in the scrabble to overcome his opponent Judd Trump, he is behaving less like a seasoned veteran and more like a panicked teenager, stomping around the room in total dismay, close to tears in his frustration.

“Fuck me Steve,” he tells his resident psychiatrist coach Dr Steve Peters. “I’m bashed up here mate. What do I do?”

The gap between O’Sullivan’s apparently serene progress to gaining his record breaking seventh world title and what was going on in his head at the time is what makes him such a fascinating character. Even better, such is his garrulous lack of worldly concern, he has long been more than happy to let us, his army of admirers, get a glimpse of what is happening beneath the bonnet. For much of his extraordinary career dominating and defining his sport, it is almost as if, for this complicated, troubled, challenged individual, we are part of the process of therapy. That he needs to share the burden in order to stay one step ahead.

Ever since Netflix sold a gazillion subscriptions on the back of Michael Jordan’s documentary The Last Dance, there has been an arms race among streaming services to secure content about our sporting heroes. And there have been plenty of successes. Drive to Survive, another Netflix series, this time about the world of Formula One, suggested this was a sport about a lot more than internal combustion engines. While Beckham insisted there was a lot more to David’s wife Victoria than her plucked and pouting image might indicate. All three series offered the possibility of sneaking behind the scenes, of revealing something we didn’t know, of being able to reassess our heroes. Albeit via the most carefully curated glimpse.

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Now on Amazon Prime, produced by David Beckham’s production company, we have the latest edition of the sporting expose. And with O’Sullivan, it soon becomes clear as we watch the film unfold, this is different, that the exposure may well be real, rather than a limited, choreographed snapshot. What it seems is that he really doesn’t mind what we learn about him. This is all part of his gloriously uninhibited self: just let it all hang out.

In many ways, Ronnie O’Sullivan is this country’s greatest current sportsman. No-one - with the possible exception of Phil Taylor, the former darts champion - has survived as long or as fruitfully at the top of their trade as he has.

The thing is, his sport is snooker. Indeed, if his prowess had been in football, golf, cricket, rugby or tennis, there would be no argument about his prominence. But snooker is not what it was. Once it was the country’s favourite television watch. 20 million of us tuned in to see Dennis Taylor beat Steve Davis in the 1984 world final. Which was about ten times as many as watched O’Sullivan beat Trump 38 years later.

He was unlucky to emerge even as his sport was in steep decline, its television audience dwindling, participation tumbling as snooker clubs shut following the smoking ban. But the lad from Essex, the son of a Sicilian mother and a chancer father who ran a string of Soho sex clubs, had a natural talent that outstripped all others. Better still, he combined it with an entertainer’s flair. From his earliest days as a child prodigy, this was a snooker player fun to watch, quick and easy on the eye, his Rocket nickname indicative of his refusal ever to hang around.

Away from the table he was equally entertaining. I met him a couple of times and he was invariably chatty, curious, sparkling with humour, refusing to take anything seriously. Except his sport. That, it soon became clear, he found almost overbearing in its personal significance. At times, his relationship with it, his constant need to demonstrate his excellence, almost crushed him.

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Indeed the fact there were problems in his life, made his brilliance all the more admirable. This was what we wanted of our heroes: the flawed genius. When first his dad was sent down for 20 years for murder, then his mum followed with an 18 month sentence for tax evasion, we saw this was a lad fighting the odds. No wonder issues with booze and drugs hung around him. He sought help, he underwent therapy, he searched for answers. And he did so, he kept none of it from us. He has written three autobiographies for goodness sake, books in which he has constantly held himself up to scrutiny.

There were times he seemed to fall out of love with his sport, he rowed constantly with administrators, he belittled other players, he retired so often he made Frank Sinatra look a role model for never stopping. Then he would come back, refreshed by his running habit (he is a really classy amateur athlete incidentally, capable of delivering the most impressive marathon times).  Invariably, once back at the table, he would then sweep the board, claiming the sport was all he had, that potting the black was all that gave him meaning.

Where he stands now is intriguing. In the film he says he has no intention of giving up. That he wants to play on into his dotage, maybe in China where the future of the game seems to reside. Those of us who have thrilled to the beauty of his potting, who recall the drama way back at the World Championships in 1997 when he completed a 147 break in a time of 5 minutes and eight seconds, a record that still stands, hope he can go on forever. And watching him in the film you begin to wonder whether he hopes he can too. Otherwise, you fear, what on earth will Ronnie O’Sullivan do with himself?