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Ronnie O’Sullivan says he can play till he’s 55 after thrashing James Cahill at Scottish Open


Ronnie O’Sullivan has no plans to retire in the near future (Picture: Getty Images)

Ronnie O’Sullivan reckons he will keep playing until he’s 55 after brushing aside James Cahill 4-0 at the Scottish Open in just 32 minutes.

The Rocket was in sensational form in Glasgow on Wednesday evening as he made breaks of 93, 111 and 86, playing with an average shot time of just 12.8 seconds.

It was the first time that O’Sullivan and Cahill had met since the latter produced a monumental shock to beat Ronnie at the World Championship earlier this year.

However, the Rocket put the youngster in his place with Cahill managing to score just 27 points over the contest.

O’Sullivan is pleased with his game at the moment and the 44-year-old thinks he has a lot of time left at the top of the game.

‘I can probably do it till I’m about 55, to be honest with you,’ said O’Sullivan. ‘I feel better now than when I did in my 20s and 30s so, for another 10 years I can’t see a reason why I can’t play like that.

‘Which is nice, I’m not going to be sat at home getting bored, at least I can go out and hit a few balls and enjoy myself.

‘If I feel like I can continue to play like that, I don’t find the game difficult sometimes.’

An O’Sullivan match rarely reaches its end without some sort of incident and this one didn’t even start without a bizarre scene.

The Rocket tried to avoid shaking the referee’s hand, preferring to fist-bump instead, which he explained after was down to avoiding germs.

‘I’ve got a thing, i’m a bit OCD with germs,’ O’Sullivan explained. ‘I don’t open door handles, I always use tissues opening door handles. I am a bit OCD like that.

‘Also you get some heavy handshaking people, they go “alright Ronnie!” they try and crush your hand and you’re like “mate, these are my living, I’ve got to take care of these, if I haven’t got these to use I’m in trouble.”‘

The Rocket may have been playing at a pace against Cahill that most players can only dream of, but he insisted that this was a toned down version of his game.

‘I feel like I’m cueing really well, as good as I have done for years,’ Ronnie continued. ‘I’m enjoying playing, enjoying just hitting balls on the practice table and the match table.

’12 seconds! it didn’t feel like that, it felt more like 21 seconds.

‘I felt like I was playing quite slow tonight, I tried to play a bit more conservative, because I have been playing a bit too attacking and I tried to rein it in a little bit.

‘So I took a bit more time on my shots and thinking about them, so you expect it to be a lot slower than that.

It’s weird, I’m baffled by that really, it’s got to be a record hasn’t it? 12 seconds? I should take up the 100 metres, mate.’

O’Sullivan returns in third round action against Martin Gould on Thursday afternoon.

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