Will Slattery

I'm assuming he'll ramp to victory, but I thought you can never take anything with Ronnie O'Sullivan for granted.

But yeah, hopefully Ken gets that marquee match in two days' time.

It's funny, Ken is very well placed to talk about how dramatic this championship was, particularly, obviously not withstanding that he's a world champion, but his 0-3 run to the final against Mark Williams was...

was as dramatic as it gets and had the hallmarks of a lot of the games that we saw over the last couple of weeks.

I have a vivid childhood memory of playing a match and my dad frog-matching me from the pitch into the cab because Ken Doherty has cut it to 16-14 versus Paul Hunter in the semi-finals and racing back to watch the last couple of frames there to see him win into the finals.

So, yeah, he had lots to say on the drama.

I'm not exaggerating.

He came onto the pitch.

He manhandled me.

I was an 11-year-old and he manhandled me off the pitch.

Steady.

I mean, he just said, well, come on.

No, no, it was hands on.

But it's a funny thing.

As a child watching that, you got to stay up late.

You know, Ken Doherty, Mark Williams was finishing around midnight.

It felt like, oh, this is a huge occasion.

When I was looking at the numbers, I think seven million watched that, you know, three, four million this year.

So it's funny even then, like, so Ken was getting a really big reach and audience then even, you know, compared to what the guys would have gotten on Monday, which was an epic final as well.

So, yeah, it was big business then.