Ronnie O'Sullivan has backed Mark Allen to become a world champion after he won the Northern Ireland Open for the second year in a row.
The Rocket rated Allen as one of his favourite current players to watch last month and the 36-year-old impressed him once again by winning eight frames on the trot against Zhou Yuelong at Belfastβs Waterfront Hall to triumph 9-4 and defend his title.
Allen secured the Alex Higgins trophy in style with a break of 109 - much to the delight of an enthralled home crowd - before his family joined in the emotional celebrations.
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β Eurosport (@eurosport) October 23, 2022
He wins the Northern Ireland Open for the second time IN A ROW#HomeNations | #NIOpen pic.twitter.com/Zl1BCUZMzp
"I don't think anyone has ever questioned Mark's talent and ability when he gets it right," O'Sullivan said of Allen, whose seventh ranking title earned him a spot in the Champion of Champions event, on Eurosport. "He is a world champion - he should win a world title with his game and his temperament.
"With the way that he is playing at the moment, the consistency levels, I'm sure he feels in a good place.
"All you can be doing is going in the right direction. As long as you are going in the right direction, things can happen."
On the emotional celebrations, O'Sullivan said: "It's great for the family. Everyone comes down and gets dressed up on a finals day and you get to share it with them. There will be so many pictures and videos taken for the kids to look back on in years to come and say 'look at me when I was six, crawling round the snooker table!' They'll be mothers by then and showing their kids saying 'Look at your grandad winning titles!"
π Northern Ireland Open hero Mark Allen has bizarrely only ventured beyond the World Championship quarter-finals once in 16 years - but Ronnie O'Sullivan believes he'll win the Crucible crown in the near future. pic.twitter.com/ysuFmauJSP
β Sporting Life π―π΄πΎβ³οΈπ₯ππ π (@SportingLifeFC) October 24, 2022
Fellow pundit and legend Jimmy White added: "He is always dangerous. We have always known that he can score and make the game look very simple when he is in the balls.
"I think he has added the safety game to it and the calmness. He takes a lot more time.
Unfair treatment
Meanwhile, neither O'Sullivan nor White were impressed with the intervention of referee Leo Scullion after Zhou Yuelong took over two minutes to play a tricky shot during the fourth frame of the final.
"Zhou Yuelong played a really poor positional shot," White explained to Eurosport.
"The referee told him to hurry up because he took over two minutes. I don't think that is fair because he is not a slow player.
"If he was one of the slow players on the tour who does it every other shot, then I think he was entitled to tell him, but it is a very difficult shot.
"He should have been 3-1 up already at that point but was not, so that is why he took so long over the shot.
"We say that Neil Robertson is a fast player, but against Judd Trump, he needed to take two or three minutes over a shot because pressure can do that to you sometimes. Your thought pattern can go. Mark Selby famously took six-and-a-half minutes [over a shot].
"Zhou is in a difficult situation, he has played a bad positional shot, and he has just taken a little bit of time. It is a one-off; he is not a slow player."
"Everyone needs to be treated the same"@ronnieo147 discusses 'unfair' referee warning to Zhou Yuelong#HomeNations | #NIOpen pic.twitter.com/4G90CQktmG
β Eurosport (@eurosport) October 23, 2022
O'Sullivan concurred: "Yes, he is a fast player and sometimes you have got to look at the table.
"If there was an obvious shot on then you might go, 'OK, two minutes is too long', but there was not an obvious shot on.
"He took a bit of time, but if that is going to be the new rule that after two minutes [you get a warning] then that should apply to everyone.
"Maybe he was just doing that because Zhou is not a high-ranked player. Would he do the same to [Mark] Selby, [John] Higgins, [Neil] Robertson, and myself? Maybe not, who knows?
"But if you are going to start doing that, then you have to do it all the time, you know."
The perfect ref
As the analysis of the incident continued, O'Sullivan recounted how he gave Scullion some coaching to help him referee in a way that was not distracting and to help him play around him more smoothly.
"It was during the World Championship, he was the referee for Malta and he would put the ball on the spot and walk round," O'Sullivan told Eurosport.
"While he was walking around, I could see him moving, so I had to coach him.
"So what I would do was, when I would pot the black and he would put it back on the spot, I would say 'stop!' He would stop, but he would be right over the table and I could tell that he thought it was not right.
"I said 'I don't mind you being in my eye line, just don't move!' I had to make a break of 40, actually coaching him, but it was good.
"I then said 'keep it up for the whole match because I am a fast player so I need you to be on the ball - all the others are a bit slower so you can take your time with them - but with me, you are here to serve me, me not to serve you'.
"So it was just trying to teach him how I like him to ref, really.
"I would make a great ref," he continued, making the point that former players would make the best referees, given their experiences.
"I would make an amazing ref because you have just got to know. When you have played snooker, you know. You know what is important and what is not important."
