Masters Snooker: Ronnie O'Sullivan v John Higgins preview

Nevertheless, even sport can feel mundane from time time; another T20 match in another global six-fest, another Premier League dead-rubber; another race meeting to sit alongside the seven others on a Saturday. Snooker is just the same and five weeks of it before Christmas, wall-to-wall-to-wall ad nauseam, left even the hardiest of supporters drained.

But then, once in a while, a match or tournament comes along to stoke the old fires; to get the hairs standing on the back of necks, and to remind us of the power of elite sport and those who play it. You just can't beat it.

On Friday night, snooker will be witness to one of those very matches as two of its finest - rivals since the year they both turned professional way back in 1992 - lock horns not for old times' sake, but for a place in the semi-finals of the Masters and the chance to add another title victory to glittering careers that have seen and achieved so much already.

For O'Sullivan, the debate as to whether he can truly be labelled as the greatest snooker play of all time surely died at the conclusion of last summer's World Championship, one won with a mixture of guts, determination and his undoubted genius. A sixth Crucible victory, to sit alongside his seven UK Championships and seven Masters titles, helps make him the most decorated player of all time and undoubtedly the most popular.

The strange thing is, were it not for Higgins, and to a lesser extent Mark Williams - another from that now famous Class of '92 - O'Sullivan would surely have won plenty more. Both were world champions before O'Sullivan and while the man they call 'The Rocket' has been a constant at the top of the game for almost 30 years now, his chance to completely run riot has been held back by a generation of fellow professionals playing to a level never seen previously.

As good as he was, Stephen Hendry didn't face the depth of quality that O'Sullivan has wrestled with for nearly three decades and the Scot headed for the exit door in 2012 when he felt he could no longer compete in the way that he once could.

In all that time Higgins has won four world titles himself, and made four more Crucible finals, while three UK wins and a couple of Masters trophies have helped him to reach 30 ranking titles in total, only seven behind O'Sullivan and six behind Hendry.

Make no mistake, when talking about O'Sullivan and Higgins, we are talking about two of the very best the sport has ever seen and that they have been rivals for so long only pays further compliment to their achievements. It's a rivalry that Higgins described on Wednesday night as 'friendly' and he was at pains to say how much 'respect' he has for O'Sullivan's game.

That respect works both ways with O'Sullivan recently going on record to stress that snooker's modern-day great, Judd Trump, needs to win more Triple Crown events to be talked about in the same conversations as Higgins and Hendry.

As his vast haul of titles demonstrates, Higgins is every inch the complete snooker player with a tactical game second to none, scoring to match the biggest hitters in the sport, and a temperament so cool he ought to wear thermals in the sauna. And O'Sullivan knows this, too.

That is why this match is so intriguing. And it's why Higgins is as short as 13/8 to come out on top despite not winning a title since the 2018 Welsh Open and not making it past the last four of any tournament this season.

Even though O'Sullivan has won each of the last three meetings between the pair, and made a couple of finals this season following his World Championship success in August, the layers aren't queuing up to write off the veteran Scot who, while trailing his great rival in the head-to-head record (37-29), has always been happy to go toe-to-toe with 'The Rocket' when others have preferred to take their off gloves.

That will again be the case on Friday night and the excitement in Higgins's voice when asked about facing O'Sullivan after his defeat of Mark Allen was palpable. These are the matches he remembers, the ones he belongs in, and the chance for one more dust-up with his old rival is certain to have his juices flowing.

The steely, trademark manner in which he held off Allen's comeback in the first round confirms he still has the game to compete with anyone on the tour. His bottle - that will never leave him.

The same goes for O'Sullivan, who was clearly hurt by crushing defeats at the hands of Mark Selby and Trump before Christmas, and the fact he was open and honest enough to admit he has been practicing hard in the last few weeks leaves him without any excuses if things go wrong over the next few days.

O'Sullivan has put himself under pressure now, particularly with Trump having to miss the event and Selby and Neil Robertson losing in the first round. Masters win number eight looks to be his for the taking and Ronnie, his own biggest critic, will know that better than anyone. The manner in which he recovered to blow past Ding Junhui on Wednesday - producing a performance as good as anything he has given since that epic World Championship semi-final - will have done little to dampen his expectations.

That adds another interesting dimension to a quarter-final that couldn't be any more fascinating, and Higgins might be best served playing the role of the underdog and trying to exert enough pressure on O'Sullivan while freeing his own arm and viewing the match as somehow no-lose.

I'm not sure that will sit right with a champion like Higgins, though. It might have been his eagerness to kill off Trump in their English Open semi-final earlier in the season that cost him that night, and you sense that both will need to be carried from the arena on their shield when this latest duel is finished.

Perhaps Higgins' best chance is to hope that his opponent's penchant for starting slowly in his recent matches continues, and the 3/1 on offer for the former to lead after four frames isn't the worst price I've ever seen when you consider O'Sullivan has trailed early in so many big matches this season.

Of course, the manner in which he finished that match with Ding suggests we are dealing with an O'Sullivan much closer to his best form now and if that is the case, it might be that even his oldest rival is unable to contain him.

One thing is for sure, we should be in for a special night. Another to add to the list of great matches these two gladiators of our sport have given us over the years. That they are both now well into their forties, and that such clashes between them are sure to become less and less frequent, only adds to the excitement.

Nothing lasts forever and the chance to witness these two great players doing battle one more time is something to savour. There will be no crowd to greet the two when they enter the arena in Milton Keynes, which is a great shame, but I can't promise they won't hear me shouting their names all the way from Yorkshire.