Scots snooker star reveals the reason 20 year feud with World Champion will NEVER end

Scots snooker ace Stephen Maguire has admitted that he will NEVER be friends with Shaun Murphy after the infamous chalk-gate incident.

The rivalry between the two players stems three decades back to their junior days and there will be another instalment with a tasty tie in the last 16 of the World Championship. It is 20 years since 42-year-old Maguire was docked a frame at the Grand Prix for forgetting his chalk and causing the match to be delayed. There is a long-held belief that Murphy asked referee Johan Oomen to dock Maguire a frame, which the Magician firmly denies.

But Maguire insisted: “We can’t resolve it because he always says he never said to the referee. The poor referee isn’t with us any longer, but he did…He knows he did. But I’m over it. We don’t spend time together. I don’t hate him or anything like that. If you asked me 20 years ago I might have said something different, but I can’t be bothered now. We’ve all grown up, he’s got kids, I’ve got kids. “We don’t go for meals. But we walk by each other and talk about snooker and everything’s okay.”

Maguire is up for it on the sport’s biggest stage this year after a couple of years in the doldrums. And the top half of the draw has blown wide open for the Glaswegian with last year’s winner Luca Brecel and four-time champion Mark Selby already dumped onto the Sheffield scrapheap.

He has won his last three meetings with the Magician, who has failed to beat him since 2017, which includes in the first round at the Crucible two years ago. But despite their careers running alongside one another, you could not get two more opposed personalities.

“I’ve known him longer than my wife!” Reflected Maguire. “It’s crazy when you think about it that we’ve played each other since we were 11 or 12 years old.

“It’s mad because there are a few of us. Ryan Day, Ricky Walden, we’ve all grown up together and we’re still competing against each other. Shaun is a showman, he loves it. It’s always been like that.

“I think we’re polar opposites in every walk of life. But he’s a great snooker player, I’ve never said he’s not been. He’s great to watch and he’s good to play against because he goes for everything.”