Crucible favourite reflects on the hard times that preceded his break into snooker – and dogged him even as he hit the heights
“These are the things that made me a really strong person and competitor,” Neil Robertson says in a secluded corner of a snooker club in Cambridge.
The amiable Australian is ranked as the third best snooker player in the world, but Robertson has spent a chunk of the afternoon showing me how many empty glasses he could carry when working as a bus-boy in a Melbourne pub, what it felt like to be unemployed and how his career was almost derailed for three years when he struggled to help his wife cope with mental-health issues.
