It was as friendly as ever between good pals Mark Allen and Jordan Brown before their UK Championship clash, but Ronnie O’Sullivan cannot understand the pleasantries.
Allen and Brown are close mates and practice partners and play each other for the first time as professionals in the last 32 of the UK Championship on Saturday.
Ahead of their match at the Barbican in York they were chatting away in the practice room, then instead of the pre-match handshake they had a nice friendly hug.
The world champion can’t get his head round why you would want to be so friendly with an opponent ahead of a huge match, saying it is not the route he would be going down.
‘I don’t get it, I just don’t get it. Listen maybe I’m just different but I don’t want to talk to anyone, I’ve got no interest,’ O’Sullivan told Eurosport.
‘This is what it’s all about, competition, this is the most important part. I don’t understand it, I really don’t, but everyone’s different.’
Jimmy White agreed with his friend O’Sullivan, saying it is not the time to be overly pally, just before a game.
‘As Ron says, at the end of the day it’s your business, whoever’s in front of you you’ve got to annihilate them,’ said the Whirlwind.
‘So I’m a bit with Ron there, me and Tony Meo avoided each other, nicely, we’d nod but that’s it.
‘You don’t want to give any pleasantries before a match. Steve Davis, you didn’t even see him before a game.’
O’Sullivan tends to do things his own way, as he did during the recent Champion of Champions final when Judd Trump made a 147 against him and there was no handshake between the players afterwards.
The Rocket was asked about the incident on Saturday and suggested, among other reasons, that he didn’t bother because making a 147 is a piece of cake.
‘It was a strange one, for me a 147, I get why people think it’s an amazing thing to do, but for me I don’t find it a difficult thing to do,’ he said. ‘When I see someone else do it I just think it’s quite normal.
‘The most important thing going through my head was that I still had one more frame to play, it was 6-2, I was thinking I need to try and win this last frame.
‘I was probably in too much of a zone, if my concentration wasn’t so good maybe I’d have got caught up in it, I was just so focused on trying to be present, I was in my bubble really.
‘Then I was surprised that Judd actually went for a 147 because there was no prize for a 147, so I’m all about risk and reward, if you’re going to take the risk then there should be a reward.
‘I was shocked he went for it because he could have missed trying to get on the black.
‘It wasn’t a psychological thing, I don’t play psychological games, I’m all about pot all the balls, play good snooker and that’s the way it’s done.
‘It’s water off a duck’s back when it comes to criticism, it don’t do anything to me anymore.’
MORE : ‘Shake hands and war as usual’ – Great friends Mark Allen and Jordan Brown play for first time at UK Championship
MORE : Jimmy White credits son and work on mindset for amazing UK Championship run
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