UK Snooker Championship LIVE: Updates as Ronnie O’Sullivan takes on Anthony McGill

World champion Luca Brecel insists splashing the cash has helped restore his hunger for more snooker success after he kicked off his UK Championship campaign with a gruelling 6-4 victory over Yuan Sijun in York.

The Belgian celebrated his shock Crucible success six months ago by spending half his winnings on a £250,000 Ferrari and revealed he drained his bank balance further this week by adding a Range Rover and a Porsche Taycan to his growing garage.

“I bought two more cars this week so I went from a millionaire to a non-millionaire,” said Brecel. “It was a conscious decision to buy the cars and maybe feel that bit of pressure again, to recreate the feeling I had of just starting my career.”

Brecel, who will replenish his ailing balance by a Ferrari-sized £250,000 if he goes on to claim his first UK title next Sunday, said he struggled in the aftermath of his epic triumph over Mark Selby, having achieved a dream that drove him since he first picked up a cue at the age of nine.

Judd Trump revealed how his unquenchable desire for success helped lift him off his sick bed and into the second round of the UK Championship in York with a convincing 6-1 win over Pang Junxu.

The 34-year-old is the latest top star to arrive at the tournament suffering the apparent effects of flu, after Ding Junhui considered withdrawal before edging defending champion Mark Allen on the opening day. But Trump, who became only the fifth player in history to win three back-to-back ranking tournaments last month, indicated that pulling out was not an option as he targets a title that has eluded him since a solitary success in 2011.

“I didn’t feel great, but I’m always going to turn up and give it my best,” said Trump, who fears he caught the bug after attending rival Ronnie O’Sullivan’s documentary premiere in London last week.

“It’s a big tournament and you obviously want to do well in it. Maybe I had slightly lower expectations, and maybe that helped a bit. It was a decent first-round performance and hopefully I can go away and get a bit better.”

There is a scene in The 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.

Ronnie O’Sullivan has revealed he started a world championship tournament “on the phone to the Samaritans” as he opened up on his mental health struggles.

In an interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, O’Sullivan said he was “really struggling” at the start of the 2022 World Championships.

The 47-year-old said: “At the start of the championships I was on the phone to Samaritans.”

He added: “I said to them ‘I’m really struggling’, I was having anxiety and panic attacks. They told me to call the doctor and that’s when I was put on antidepressants.”

O’Sullivan went on to win the World Championship that year.

The Independent’s senior sports writer Lawrence OStlere also interviewed O’Sullivan at the premiere of his new documntary:

Through the door of a swish London hotel, held open by a concierge; into the dimly lit lobby, past an open fire and smart dinner guests, into a shiny lift; down a corridor lined with abstract art, around a bend to the very end where the last door waits in semi-darkness; through to a suite with a long table scattered with sandwiches and cream scones – Ronnie O’Sullivan’s favourite food – where his agent and various publicists mill; to a leather sofa at the far end.

This is where O’Sullivan is holed up, an hour before his movie premiere in London’s Leicester Square. He emerges from another room with a smile, offers a fist bump and sits down. He is dressed in a blue jumper, dark jeans and smart shoes. Executive producer David Beckham is among the famous guests coming to celebrate O’Sullivan, journalists are here to ask questions and fans are sitting in cinemas around the country to watch the film and a live Q&A afterwards. And he’s dreading it.

Read Lawrence’s full interview with ‘The Rocket’:

There are a number of eye-opening moments in the new Ronnie O’Sullivan documentary, The Edge of Everything, which lays bare one of the most complex and compelling characters in sport and a lifelong battle with his own genius. But one scene is particularly striking, when O’Sullivan and his parents remember his father’s arrest and sentencing for murder.

“I don’t want to talk about this because it’s not fair on the people that have lost their son,” says Ronnie O’Sullivan Sr, of the night he stabbed Bruce Bryan to death in a club on Chelsea’s King’s Road and injured Bruce’s brother Kelvin. “I know I took that man’s life and I know I hurt the other one … I’m still alive, thank God, but if I hadn’t done what I’d done, I’d be dead.”

When O’Sullivan’s mother, Maria, found out about her husband’s arrest, she encouraged the management team of a 16-year-old Ronnie to send him away to a tournament in Thailand, so he might be distanced from the news when it broke. When he was eventually told his dad had been charged with murder, Ronnie screamed and collapsed. “I’ve always regretted sending him away, I was just trying to protect him,” Maria says. “I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me.”

Read Lawrence Ostlere’s full review of the documentary:

Judd Trump reached the second round on Monday with a convincing 6-1 win over Pang Junxu, despite suffering the apparent effects of flu and entering the tournament as the fifth player in history to win three back-to-back ranking tournaments last month.

Trump is aiming to win the one title that has eluded him since a solitary success in 2011. “I didn’t feel great, but I’m always going to turn up and give it my best,” said Trump, who fears he caught the bug after attending rival O’Sullivan’s documentary premiere in London last week. “It’s a big tournament and you obviously want to do well in it. Maybe I had slightly lower expectations, and maybe that helped a bit. It was a decent first-round performance and hopefully I can go away and get a bit better.”

Welcome to The Independent’s coverage of Ronnie O’Sullivan beginning his UK Snooker Championship campaign in York.

O’Sullivan faces gritty Scot Anthony McGill, who beat him 13-12 at the 2021 World Championship, and heads to the Barbican after promoting his new documentary ‘The Edge of Everything’.

Stick with us for all the latest updates from the best-of-11 clash.