Ronnie O'Sullivan may quit snooker to take up rival sport as Rocket eyes new 'challenge'

Ronnie O’Sullivan has hinted at a surprise career change when he retires from professional snooker.

The Rocket is revered as the greatest snooker players of all-time, having won an astonishing 23 Triple Crown titles, including a joint-record seven World Championship victories.

While the 48-year-old has shown no signs of letting up in recent years, O’Sullivan has revealed he’s set his sights on becoming the ‘best pool player in the world’ after hanging up his cue.

Speaking to news outlet Shanghai Let's Meet about the growing Chinese 8-Ball scene, O’Sullivan said: “Any cue sport fascinates me, so I’m looking at how popular Chinese 8-Ball is in China now. It’s huge, it’s massive.

“Obviously I want to finish my snooker first, but I’ve got one eye on maybe, when my snooker finishes, I don’t know when, three, four, five, six years, I don’t know when that will be…but definitely when I finish snooker it’ll be something I want to go into and play some pool.

“Maybe give it a go and see if I can win the World Championships and be the best pool player in the world. That would be a challenge for me.”

O’Sullivan wouldn’t be the first cueist to swap from snooker to pool, with Mark Williams having already dabbled with the eight-ball game.

And as big money is on offer to competition winners, it’s no surprise either, with a whopping £557,900 on offer to the winner of the World Heyball Masters Grand Finals earlier in the year - over £50,000 more than the World Snooker Championship victor.

O’Sullivan has flirted with a code change in the past, suggesting it’s his sponsors who are dragging him back to the snooker table instead.

Speaking back in November, O’Sullivan said: “I’m trying to see if there’s an appetite for me to go over and play pool at some point.

“I can’t keep playing snooker against the young guys, getting up for it, match-in-match-out, I don’t want to be playing just for the sake of it.

“I want to keep playing for the next 10-15 years, earning a living, having a good time. China’s a place I like to go, obviously it’s a very popular sport out there.

"But I’ll just have to see what my sponsors are like because at the moment they’re sponsoring me as a snooker player, but I’m trying to see if they’ll sponsor me as a pool player.

"To me it’s about keeping my sponsors happy, it doesn’t matter if I play pool snooker, billiards, whatever. I just want to have a nice life."