Ronnie O’Sullivan and John Higgins have been scrapping away on the snooker table since they were boys and it remains a simmering sporting rivalry in their sixth decades, but not a personal one that has ever boiled over.
The Rocket and the Wizard of Wishaw might be the highest quality and most enduring rivalry on the baize, but it has never had any real edge to it, making it an epic war, but a cordial one.
The latest battle comes at the Crucible as they meet in the second round of the World Championship, starting on Saturday night.
Both men turn 51 this year and the Englishman remembers the first time he met the Scot, long before either achieved the legendary status they hold now.
‘I played him in Pontins when he was only 14 and I’d never heard of John until that tournament,’ said O’Sullivan.
‘You knew then that he was an unbelievable player. He’s an amazing player.’
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It is a compliment that Higgins has paid O’Sullivan in the past, telling WST in 2023: ‘When I first clapped eyes on him, I thought this guy was just incredible, there was something about him. Obviously that’s been proved right.’
The rivalry took root in the junior ranks, with a 15-year-old Higgins beating O’Sullivan in the quarter-finals of the 1991 World Junior Masters, before going on to down the other of the Class of 92 trio, Mark Williams, in the final.
Onto the professional tour they progressed and they rose quickly to the top, meeting in the finals of the Masters and British Open in 1995, with each claiming one of those trophies.
The first of their Crucible meetings came a year later but it very nearly didn’t as the rogue young O’Sullivan put it in jeopardy by assaulting then press officer Mike Ganley.
Higgins recalls a bizarre wait until late at night to hear how the Rocket would be punished for headbutting an official.
‘I didn’t know until one o’clock in the morning whether I was going to have to play Ronnie at 10am,’ said the Wizard of Wishaw. ‘Because that was the time he stuck the head on Mike Ganley or something.
‘I thought it was every chance because there were conflicting reports that he was going to get thrown out of the tournament. So, I was lying in my bed at night, thinking: “Am I going to get a bite of the semi-finals here?”
‘I got a phone call in the hotel. The phone call basically says “Yeah, you’re playing Ronnie at 10 in the morning” and I was like, for f**k sake!
‘So it’s just funny the things I can remember. That was many years ago, 30 years ago. I remember it as clear as day.’
O’Sullivan later explained in his 2023 book Unbreakable that the headbutt was because ‘he tried throwing me and my mate out of the players’ lounge.’
He added: ‘I’m not proud of it; it’s the only headbutt I’ve ever done in my life, and the only time I’ve grabbed someone by the balls and called them a grass. Like I say, I’d lost my way. I’d become someone I didn’t want to be.’
Unfazed by the drama, O’Sullivan won that Crucible quarter-final 30 years ago 13-12, escaping with a £20,000 fine.
This year’s will be their seventh meeting on snooker’s most iconic stage, having contested a final in 2001, won by O’Sullivan, and most recently a semi-final in 2022, won by O’Sullivan.
It would be entirely inaccurate to paint the Rocket as the dominant force in this rivalry, though, with their Crucible head-to-head standing at 3-3.
In their ranking event meetings, Higgins leads the way 21-13 and just in Triple Crown matches, the Wizard is 6-5 up. In every professional match they have played, O’Sullivan is 41-35 ahead, with three draws.
It is an incredible amount of snooker to have played against each other, but the reason the rivalry has never got personal is because the two have never had much of a relationship.
There has always been great respect, so much so that harsh words have rarely ever emerged, while there is a distance that means falling out is impossible because they had never fallen in with each other.
‘I get asked about that and it’s the same answer I give, I don’t really know Ronnie at all,’ Higgins told the Talking Snooker podcast in 2023.
‘When you think all these years we’ve been on the tour, we’ve never really been that close, I could count on one hand the amount of meals we’ve had together.
‘But I’ve got the utmost respect for him as a snooker player, incredible player and I think it goes back to what I said about Mark Williams. Going for the same titles, you cannot be all that friendly with each other. Respect of course, but being friends, nah.
‘We’re different characters as well, the three of us, totally different characters.’
There has been the odd disagreement, as you would expect, like Higgins taking exception to O’Sullivan saying he would not encourage his own children to play snooker.
‘I think it was terrible of Ronnie saying that, he should know better,’ said the Scot, who felt the comments were ‘a disgrace’.
The ultimate respect on the table remains, though, with O’Sullivan capable of gushing about other players at times, but never quite like he does about Higgins.
After watching a Higgins match in Belfast in 2021, O’Sullivan said: ‘If you wanted to be another snooker player, I would choose to be John Higgins, that’s all I can say really.
‘I’m always baffled when people say they want to play John Higgins. I’m like, you don’t want to play John Higgins when he’s playing well!
‘It’s like playing Lionel Messi. No I don’t want to play against Lionel Messi! I don’t want to play against Roger Federer! If he’s playing well I’m going to be a spectator, I’m going to come off second best.
‘We all know that he is the guvnor. This geezer is unbelievable. He’s a legend of this game.’
It is how highly they regard each other that makes the sporting rivalry so great, because every ball means so much as they battle to prove to themselves they can conquer the other.
Higgins explained: ‘I would never really say there’s been any animosity, but there’s always been a little bit of “I need to try and beat this guy” because he has gone on to cement his place in 99.9% of people’s eyes as the greatest.’
They are still top players, but the older they get the greater the chance that any Crucible meeting could be their last.
The Scot is certainly aware of that, saying: ‘There’s a big, big chance that this could be our final game. So it would be something to savour.’
It will be something all snooker fans savour as we witness one of the final chapters of an old school rivalry, built solely on being the best.