How are you finding not being able to train or even play a game of snooker?
It’s fine, I usually have time off over the summer anyway, so for me personally, I feels as though my summer has been sped up a month where we have missed the Tour Championship and the World Championship. I just feels as though how it would do at the end of the World Championship where a lot of people would assume I want to go away, go on a nice holiday, when in fact, my ideal holiday is just staying at home actually, because many times, you go a month with only spending one or two days at home, so it’s actually quite nice to be around the home with the family.

It’s not a normal thing for an Australian to grow up wanting to be a snooker player, how did that come about?
Well my brother and I used to spend the weekend’s with our dad and he used to take us to play a bit of 9-ball pool every Saturday morning, snooker tables were probably a bit too big for us to play when we only played once a week, so that’s how I originally started. After about a year of doing that, the place we used to go to, one of the owners was selling his half of the business and my dad took the opportunity and bought in to the club, so all of a sudden, it was free pool and snooker for us! Snooker was very popular in Australia, ‘Pot Black’ was very popular back in the 80’s, Jimmy White, Alex Higgins, these guys used to go out to Australia every year to play in the Australian Masters. Similar to over here, there were only four or five TV channels, which created some really good exposure. Eddie Charlton was obviously a really popular figure, got to a few world finals, lost to Reardon, missed an easy brown in that match. That’s how we got started, my dad used to run a junior competition every Saturday morning, used to send a lot of leaflets around the school, the winner got something like five dollars, a can of Coke and a Mars bar, which used to be a great prize for an 11 year-old kid back then!

How did you used to watch snooker back in Australia?
We used to get tapes sent over of the Masters, the UK Champs, the World Champs, someone from the UK would record them and send them over. The first match I watched was Stephen Hendry vs Alan McManus in the final of the Masters, where Alan broke his record, I think Stephen had won the previous four or five years. The other owner of my dad’s club was Scottish, and he used to love Hendry and McManus, so we used to get a lot of tapes with those players, so that’s how I grew up watching the games. We used to get the tapes a couple of months, at least, after the match had happened, but because I was only 11 or 12, I didn’t really know the results anyway, so it didn’t matter.

What age were you when you really committed to snooker?
Probably when I didn’t want to be in school anymore! When I was 14 or 15, I really didn’t want to be in school anymore, I didn’t enjoy it at all, probably the education system wasn’t the best, once kids started falling behind, teachers were basically let them fall over. So basically, I didn’t really enjoy school, so I used to go to my dad’s club after school a couple of days a week, I used to play every day during the school holiday’s, play every weekend and it got to the point when my dad knew I didn’t want to be in school at all, and it was probably doing more harm then good, so my mum would go to work and I’d get all dressed up for school, then just walk to my dad’s snooker club because it was only about 10 minutes away from the house. He would see me, say hello, and just get the balls out…! My mum wasn’t too happy when she found out about that mind!

I dropped off the Tour three times, when I was 16, I fell off, then I wont the Oceana Champs when I was 18, much improved player, I did quite well on the Tour, won 10 matches and I did quite well, lost to Stephen Maguire 5-4, lost to Ian McCulloch 10-8 in the World’s qualifiers, two rounds before getting to the Crucible, so I was a completely different player then.

What was the defining moment where it all just clicked?
From 16 to 21, I fell of the Tour three times. By the time I was 21, I had pretty much given up, fallen off the Tour three times, realistically how many times can you fly over from Australia to base yourself in the UK? So I was in the job centre in Melbourne, I didn’t really have a choice, I was in this queue and there were a lot of people arguing because they weren’t going to get their dole check. Back home, you have to apply for at least 12 jobs before you can get your cheque, so there were people there that hadn’t applied for enough, so it all started kicking off. So I thought, is this going to be me for the rest of my life? So I just turned around and left, had a chat with my mum and dad, the world U21’s was coming up in about a month and it was in New Zealand, which is only a short flight away from Melbourne, and so I practiced for that, went to the world U21’s, that was in 2003, and still to this day, it was the strongest field ever at a world U21’s. It was myself, Ding Junhui, Mark Allen, one of the Poomjaeng brothers, many great players there. I beat Ding in the semi-finals, then beat Liu Song in the final. So when I won that, I actually got an overseas wildcard pick, one of five overseas players to qualify for the Tour. I got one and I remember Ding got one. So I’ve qualified for the Tour, this is my last chance, if I really want to make it.

All this lead to you winning the World Champs in 2010, which must have been really emotional for you and all your family that had travelled over. Tell us what that was like.
I was one of the favourites heading into the tournament, I had won the Grand Prix earlier in the season. That year we only had six ranking events, there were a lot of politics surrounding the sport, whether Barry Hearn was going to take over, an incredible amount of pressure for the players heading in, because we all thought this might be the last big World Championship, with the big prize money rumoured to be taken out of the sport. Going in, I felt really good, beat Fergal O’Brien first round 10-6, the second round was one of the biggest talking points of the tournament, I was 6-0 down to Martin Gould who was just playing some ridiculous snooker, nothing to lose, crowd loving it, he was coming out to full on heavy metal rock music, they wanted to see an Aussie get beat that’s for sure. It went to 11-5, and I was staying in my house with a few friends and Matthew Selt, who used to visit every now and again, and the person who rented to apartment asked if I wanted to extend for another week, and I said no don’t bother, probably going to get beat, so we didn’t extend. Then something very interesting happened, we were watching John Higgins vs Steve Davis and the winner of me vs Gould, would go on the play them, and Davis was playing really well, I think he thought it was his last chance to get to a one-table situation, and that gave me a glimmer of hope, I thought if Steve Davis could beat John Higgins, I am 11-5 down to Martin Gould, with the prospect of playing Steve Davis in the next round, Steve was not the player he was in the 80’s or 90’s, so Martin was probably thinking he would never get an opportunity like this to make the semi-finals himself, so I tried to draw confidence from that. We watched Steve Davis win and I thought if I could put Martin under some pressure in the first few frames of the night session, he might start to get nervous. So at 11-5, I came out like I was 11-5 up, positive body language, positive snooker. I won the first couple of frames and I start to notice the balls weren’t going in for Martin that were the previous session, I turned the match around and eventually won 13-12. From that point on, I decided that if I can get through that, I can get through anything in the tournament. So I won the tournament….! I think I beat Steve Davis 13-4 or 13-5, Ali Carter in the semi-finals, world number two or three at the time, then Graham Dott in the final, who was playing his third final in five years.

When you look back at the UK Champs, the Masters and the World’s, which one are you most proud about winning?
Winning all three for sure, not many players have done that. I think Judd winning the world’s made it 10 or 11, but at the stage I did it, I think I was only the seventh. Since I’ve done it, I think Selby, Shaun Murphy and Judd have gone on to join me in the group. Definitely becoming the Triple Crown winner for sure.

You are also the only player to have made a 147 in a Triple Crown final, that was when you beat Liang Wenbo in the final of the UK Champs, that must be special to you?
Yes it’s amazing, I didn’t realise it at the time, but then I heard about it in the press conference afterwards, I was sure Ronnie must have done it at some point, but yer, I am the only player. That is the best feeling ever, hitting a 147 in a final like that, the crowd, everything, it was amazing. It topped off a great couple of weeks for me, because I won the Champion of Champions a couple of weeks before, then winning the UK, then John Terry invited me to parade the trophy at half-time at Stamford Bridge, meeting all the boys in the dressing room, that was awesome.

We have spoken about the highs of your season and your life, but there have also been a few lows which you are very open about, can you talk us through some of them?
When you are a known person in the public eye, like a sportsman, you can use that as a positive to help other people who maybe afraid to come out and talk about things. What Tyson Fury did a year or so ago, when he did that documentary where he discussed his issues with mental health, his anxiety and depression. Watching that documentary, I felt as though I was watching Mille talk, he was talking about the exact same thing more or less. She wasn’t substance abusing with drugs, but with anxiety, one of the big things people do, is drink alcohol to try and settle it down, and that is what Mille was doing, which was very tough for me to try and juggle that and try and be one of the best snooker players in the world. For a few years, I was doing that without really talking about it. I had a few mixed results on the table and people not really knowing why, obviously it wasn’t myself going through those issues, but when you are trying to help someone through them, it’s probably, in some ways, it can probably be worse because you feel completely helpless in that situation. It took two or three years to actually work out what was going on, what is anxiety? First of all, learning that Mille did have anxiety, then working out what it is and how to treat it. So we went through some really tough times, especially when I was away for long periods of time. There was a time when I was only practicing 45 minutes a day, that’s all I could really manage before I came home to help her through the day. So it was really tough on the family, we started looking in to things like rehab centres and places like that, and I had always thought rehab centres were places where nutcases go or heavy drug addicts, rock stars or whatever, but when you kind of learn what goes on, they are absolutely amazing, the people involved are usually former addicts themselves, maybe alcohol abuse of drug abuse, so they have experience and know what it’s like. So Mille went to rehab for a few weeks, learned a lot of things to help deal with anxiety and depression. The first thing was to come off the alcohol, the fuel for all mental illness is alcohol and drugs, alcohol is probably worse because that’s something you can just go and buy from a shop. So you spend a month coming off the alcohol, you learn to deal with the anxiety and the depression kind of goes away once you’ve been off the alcohol long enough, then the anxiety becomes easier to deal with. You go to meetings all the time, it’s mega important to keep going to meetings and talking about stuff. Now, she’s a completely different person, I couldn’t be more proud of her for everything she’s been able to do, which then gave me the go ahead to discuss these things publicly, and the responses I’ve got through people on social media has been absolutely amazing.

You also had a video game addiction, something else you are very open about, how was that for you Neil?
The problems sort of relate to each other. I had to spend a lot of time at home, so that was my escape from dealing with things, it’s not easy to watch someone struggle so much, so that was my way of getting away from things. Some of the games are harmless, but it got to the point when I was playing way too much, like FIFA, because I am so competitive, I was getting my competitiveness out of FIFA. I would drop my son off at school and came back to play FIFA instead of going to the club. When I had days off, I could play it 12 hours straight, easily. I can’t play any ultra-competitive games full stop any more, because I just get too drawn in to them. I can play some games that aren’t like that, but it’s the competitive ones are really dangerous for me.

Your snooker improved as you started discussing these issues publically, looking at this season, how did it start for you?
It was a very strange start for me! I was defending champion at the tournament in Latvia and I think there were 10 of us, we were all on the plane about to take off, and we got a message from the captain saying there was a problem, a private jet had landed and the tyre had burst, leaving debris all over the runway, so they had to get the team out to clean it up, that took a couple of hours. Then we were about to take off again and the really bad storms hit the south-east of England, and we had to get off the plane, all stranded at Luton Airport, no flights going out of London, so my title defence went down without any defence at all!

What are your long-term goals?
When you look at the Masters, Champion of Champions, they aren’t actually ranking events, but they are more prestigious than 90% of the ranking events on the Tour. When I won the World’s, that was my sixth ranking event win, and my target then was to get to 10, and when I got to 10, a friend of mine said that I had to push for 20 now, because I think that’s what Mark Williams was on at the time, so I am going for 20, hopefully I can get there. Obviously this is the 10th anniversary of when I managed to win the World’s, I haven’t got to a final since, lost to Higgins and Ronnie a couple of times on the way to the final, many experts think that a couple of the quarter-finals I’ve lost were the final itself. Plenty of time left, we will see.

Watch The Break vodcasts on the Eurosport.co.uk website with forthcoming episodes set to feature some the greatest names in the sport.