Ronnie O'Sullivan fooling no one as he chases immortality

Ronnie O'Sullivan's insistence that he doesn't care whether he wins or loses when he plays isn't fooling anyone, according to Irish pro Fergal O'Brien.

The Rocket can go ahead of Stephen Hendry on the all-time winner's list for the World Snooker Championship over the next week and a half with an eighth victory.

O'Sullivan has regularly spoken throughout his career about his indifference to the game, telling RTÉ Sport last October at the the Northern Ireland Open that "the trick is to lose" when he's not bothered playing at an event.

He previously suggested that his longevity in the game was due to the lack of quality players coming through behind him, with O'Sullivan saying in 2020 that he'd need "to lose an arm and a leg to fall outside the top 50".

Things are a bit different ahead of his second round clash against Hossein Vafaei which starts on Thursday.

The pair previously had beef when the Iranian insisted that the seven-time world champion was bad for the game, and that he should pack it in.

It led O'Sullivan to tell Eurosport this week that Vafaei has "learned to be quiet", before adding, "don’t rattle my cage. I love it when they call me out, I love it when they give me stick. I just love it".

After Vafaei secured his own passage through to the last-16, he quipped that O'Sullivan is "such a nice person when he’s sleeping".

All fairly tame stuff when you compare it to some of the call-outs in other sports that Barry Hearn's Matchroom Sport is involved in, but it's clear there's an edge between the duo.

Not since Alex Higgins and Dennis Taylor played an infamous quarter-final at the Irish Masters at Goffs back in 1990, after Higgins had apparently threatened to have Taylor shot next time he was in Belfast, has there been