World Snooker Championship 2024: Alan McManus on Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry, John Higgins

Alan McManus remembers Ronnie O'Sullivan's first coming at the Crucible, kind of. He knows it was 1993 and he knows that they met in round one. The buzz was all Ronnie. The score was 10-7 to McManus.

"I didn't get a feeling of strength from him," says the three-time World Championship semi-finalist turned television analyst.

"He was really wet behind the ears. His shot selection was poor, but his talent, you could see. He'd only been a pro a year, and six months later he wins the UK Championship. Demolished [Stephen] Hendry in the final. He turned into this monster over the summer of '93."

The World Championship is back and O'Sullivan is favourite again. Seven titles and looking for an eighth, which would put him out on his own in the history of the game.

McManus will call it from behind the microphone, most likely rooting for his big mate John Higgins while sitting in awe of O'Sullivan, who he regularly shares a commentary booth with.

"Talking to Ronnie [about snooker] is like talking to [Pep] Guardiola or [Jurgen] Klopp and about football," he says.

McManus set down his cue three years ago and does not miss the life of a player. Did it, loved it, hated it, loved it again. Commentary fulfils the 53-year-old from one end of the year to the next, but the Crucible is different.

Ticketless, he tried to blag his way in there in 1990 but got turned away.

He played there the following year. Beat Willie Thorne, lost to Terry Griffiths - and cried. "One thing I'm envious about is when they walk out. That's special. That never goes away," he says.

Speaking on This Sporting Life, McManus talks about the carefree days of his youth when all he needed for a happy life was a cue in his hand and a back pocket big enough to house all the cash he was winning on the amateur circuit.

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Why are there so few young Scots bursting through into the pro ranks now? Because the landscape has changed from his day, he says.

"We don't have the amateur game we once did. The amateur game when I was a teenager was thriving - dozens of tournaments," he recalls.

"I played in a club under the Kingston Bridge. We'd go in there when it opened in the morning, play all day then go where the tournament was. Two and three in the morning, still playing. 'How we getting home?' 'Dunno'. That was your breeding ground."

O'Sullivan is favourite to win another world title this month

McManus was 17 and fearless. He saw an advert in a magazine about a three-man team event in Aldershot and off he and his mates went. Got a lift from a bloke with a minibus. They won the thing, of course. £1,500 in cash and another £500 on top for the highest break. He felt like a millionaire.

"We were playing at Charing Cross in Glasgow one night and we finished up about midnight," he says.

"My mates were right good players, so we said, 'what we'll do now is we'll go to the Isle of Wight', because there was a tournament there.

"'Big Rab' from Kirkcaldy drove through the night. We arrived at the ferry terminal in Southampton or Portsmouth or some place at seven or eight in the morning. 'Any ferries going to the Isle of Wight, guys?' we asked. It was a beautiful madness. If I could go back, I'd do it in two minutes."

As a pro, by his own reckoning, McManus was not the most talented, but as a competitor he was up there with the best. "Every defeat was like a death in the family. I mourned for two days. I just wallowed in my own misery," he says.

"I wasn't flamboyant and I didn't try to be. I worked hard at my game. You can only be who you are. I never took a backward step. I wanted to rip a guy's guts out. Talent is nowhere near enough.

"I've known players, literally hundreds of them, who were more gifted than I was, but if it got into a fight on the table, I backed myself all day. My drug was playing. That was my drug in life. I don't have it any more and that's fine. I had it long enough."

McManus says he squeezed the maximum from his talent through his fighting qualities

He won finals, he lost finals. He lost a truckload of semi-finals and through the span of his career the same names keep popping up. He battled with Steve Davis and Jimmy White then Hendry and Higgins. Some of those contests were epic. He says he is privileged to know those guys.

And now, in his new life, he has views on them all.

"I'm great friends with Stephen. He doesn't play many tournaments and he doesn't win any games," he says.

"He's not committed to playing, but the reason Stephen doesn't win games now is that he stubbornly refuses to play safe, he tries to be superman but he doesn't have his cape any more.

"I'd love to sit him down and say, 'hey listen, do you want to win some games or are you just fudging around?'

"He would win games because he's still a very, very good snooker player, but he plays like he's trying to prove that he's brave and you don't have to prove you're brave."

He laughs when talking about Hendry and his peak years spent in a bubble. "I almost never spoke to Stephen, for years. Not because he didn't like me or I didn't like him. He was there to play snooker.

McManus says Hendry could still compete if his game management was better

"This is a story and it's true. I've never said this to him and maybe I'll dig him up over it. We're playing in the World Cup in the spring of '96. Myself, Stephen and John [Higgins - and they won].

"We're about two months away from it and we're in Bournemouth and I'm walking along this corridor and Stephen is walking the other way and he actually put his head down and ignored me.

"We're the only two people there. I can't believe he's done that so I went to John, 'mate, you won't believe this'. And John's going, 'nah, you're imagining things'.

"We're at the British Open about a month later and John comes to me and says, 'you'll not believe this, he's just blanked me as well'."

He loves talking about his peers. Admires them massively, particularly Higgins.

"John has an other-worldly thing about him. To be in the top 16 in the world for 30 years, which it's going to be in the next year or two, is unbelievable to me. It's unbelievable that he still has the hunger and desire."

When you ask who the guy is he admires the most, he says Higgins. For the player and for the person he is. He is supposed to be neutral at the Crucible but you get a sense that if Higgins was to do it again he would be bursting with pride up there in the box.

And Ronnie? A while back, McManus wondered if he was losing some of his magic. Said it on air. Bad idea. This season, O'Sullivan has won the UK Championship, the Shanghai Masters, the World Grand Prix, the Masters and the World Masters in Saudi.

"In Saudi, he got three tons and an 80-odd and did John 4-0. John didn't pot a ball in the match. Scored four points - a foul. I mean…"

McManus did not have to say another word. It was written on his face. The life he had was special, the life he has now is still special. Different, but a joy to watch these players perform and nowhere better than at the Crucible, the playground for guys trying to rip each other's guts out.

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