Former world number one snooker player Mark Allen has given an emotional and tearful interview, which involved a hug from the presenter and the admission that he may give up the game.<\/p>\n
Allen, 40, took a break from playing after losing a dramatic semifinal in April’s World Snooker Championship in April.<\/p>\n
The Northern Irishman is understood to have taken time away from the game to deal with private matters, and it has cast doubt over the 40-year-old’s future in the sport.<\/p>\n
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Allen returned to the table for the first time since the world championship semi, where he missed a match-ball black that would have sent him to the decider, with a 4-2 defeat in the first round of the Northern Ireland Open to good friend Jordan Brown.<\/p>\n
After the defeat, Allen did an interview with TNT Sports presenter Rachel Casey, where he admitted he was strongly considering throwing away the game he loved.<\/p>\n
“I’m in a bad place at the minute, so even just to go out there and try was tough,” Allen said.<\/p>\n
“I think if I weren’t playing Jordan, I wouldn’t have come back.<\/p>\n
“I felt like if I was going to play one last time, playing here at the Waterfront, where it all started in 2005, against one of my best mates \u2014 I thought that was a better way to sign out.”<\/p>\n
Asked if he was genuinely considering retirement, the winner of 12 ranking tournaments said it was a real possibility.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been flooded with support but the problems are within. I just don’t see a future with snooker in it, if I’m honest,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s sad to say, because it’s all I’ve loved to do since I was 12, but the last few months has been really difficult, and it’s put snooker into perspective for me. At the minute, I’m just trying to survive.”<\/p>\n
In a touching moment, the interview was paused as Casey gave a clearly distraught Allen a comforting hug.<\/p>\n
Allen also gave an interview with BBC Sport NI, where he said he was not prepared to retire now, but he had contemplated it “for a while”.<\/p>\n
Allen is a former world number one with 12 ranking titles in his career since turning professional in 2005.<\/p>\n
He has won his home Northern Ireland Open twice, as well as two of the three Triple Crown events \u2014 Masters (2018) and the UK Championship (2022).<\/p>\n
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Brown, who advances to the final 32 in Belfast with his win, described the match against his friend Allen as ” the hardest match I’ve ever had to deal with”.<\/p>\n
“I don’t even know what to say, I’m lost for words,” he told Casey on TNT Sports.<\/p>\n
“I’ve missed him, I love him. Just a great guy, through and through.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former world number one snooker player Mark Allen has given an emotional and tearful interview, which involved a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":935698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,175640,502241,502240,213504,85],"class_list":["post-935697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mark-allen","tag-northern-ireland-open","tag-rachel-casey","tag-snooker","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/935698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}