Ronnie O'Sullivan: Rocket beats Hossein Vafaei to reach UK Championship final 30 years after first title

Ronnie O'Sullivan beat Hossein Vafaei 6-2 to reach the UK Championship final, 30 years after he first lifted the title.

O'Sullivan and Vafaei were meeting for the first time since their eagerly-anticipated grudge match at the World Championship earlier this year, when the Iranian smashed the pack of reds on his first break-off shot.

There was plenty of respect shown between both players on Saturday, with the pair exchanging words at the end of the match as O'Sullivan reached his ninth UK Championship final.

The Rocket has won the event, which is snooker's second-biggest ranking event behind the World Championship, a record seven times - most recently in 2018.

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O'Sullivan will play Ding Junhui in Sunday's final after the Chinese player beat Judd Trump 6-4. The 47-year-old has not won a ranking tournament since his 2022 World Championship success at the Crucible.

He won the Shanghai Masters, an invitational event, earlier this season but pulled out of the Champion of Champions in early November to take a mental health break.

"If I was just happy to get to the last 16 or quarters, I would be like 'OK, win a couple matches' but it's hard to be happy with that when you are used to winning or feel like you are capable of winning," O'Sullivan told BBC Sport.

"The worst thing for me is going out there embarrassing myself. I don't mind losing, it's just embarrassing myself, missing balls. It's fear, stage fright, whatever you want to call it.

"In practice it doesn't matter but in matches you want to come out and do yourself justice. Losing, winning is all part and parcel of the sport we are involved in. It's not like a five-minute career, it's a long one so you kind of brush bad losses off. They don't really matter really."

Hossein Vafaei calls Ronnie O'Sullivan his "hero" and there was plenty of respect between both players on Saturday

Vafaei errors prove costly

O'Sullivan started the match well by going 2-0 up with a break of 113, his 1,228th career century, but Vafaei hit back to level the scores at 2-2 going into the mid-session interval.

Breaks of 35 and 60 edged O'Sullivan ahead before Vafaei made two big mistakes in the next two frames. O'Sullivan was 52 in front during the sixth frame and Vafaei had an opportunity to punish the seven-time world champion, only to miss a simple red to the left centre.

With O'Sullivan two frames from victory, Vafaei failed to take his chances again as he missed a black off its spot, so trailed 5-2.

It certainly wasn't vintage O'Sullivan but his experience comfortably got him over the line to reach his 30th Triple Crown final.