Snooker star Matthew Selt has hailed Chelsea icon John Terry for helping him to control his emotions both on and off the table. The world number 34 has often let the pressure of the sport get to him, with his outbursts becoming infamous.
Selt was allegedly rude and abusive off the table towards a Matchroom senior executive in Saudi Arabia last year. And he was consequently handed a five-figure fine.
He was then involved in angry incident in German Masters qualifying as he stormed off and shouted at the referee just moments after defeat to Latvian wonderkid Artemijs Zizins. But the 40-year-old now has emotions in check and has given praise to Chelsea icon Terry for his advice.
He said: “I show my emotions. I spoke to John Terry a couple of years ago about whether to keep it in or let it out. He said: ‘I’ve known you long enough. Get it out and move on. Otherwise it’s just going to build up inside you – and you’ll explode.’
“John was someone when I met him I was in awe of. But the first person to message or ring me after the Zizins outburst was him, checking in to see if I was okay. To have someone of that calibre, in terms of what he’s done, to be able to speak to is great.
“John’s a great guy, who has been good to me over the last ten years. But John takes the money on the golf course because he’s a cheat! He plays off the wrong handicap.
“One minute he’s off scratch and the next he’s off six, it’s an absolute liberty. He’s an unbelievable golfer who fluctuates tremendously.”
Terry and Selt are close friends and take to the golf course together on regular occasions. But he will be forced to focus on his task at the Crucible over the coming weeks.
There has already been controversy after he qualified for the tournament. His opponent Jimmy Robertson has claimed that he was distracted by Selt’s responses to his game during their qualifying matchup.
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Selt revealed: “Jimmy pulled me to one side after one of the frames and said: ‘What are you doing? You’re putting me off.’ I obviously wasn’t trying to do that. Ultimately, it got to him. I feel genuinely gutted to be honest.
“I’m happy to win but not to the point where my actions resulted in the decline in his performance. That’s sport I suppose. I wasn’t doing anything completely out of order. I want to send my apologies to Jimmy.
“I do what I do all the time. I just commentate on my shots. If a ball’s going towards the hole, as happened numerous times during the match, I’d say: ‘There’s another one going towards the hole.’
“But it wasn’t as if I said anything after the balls had come to rest deliberately trying to put him off and that kind of stuff. I don’t like doing it to the detriment of my opponent, especially someone I’ve classed as a close friend since the age of 13 like Jimmy. I don’t know what he’s going to feel. But I feel pretty crap right now.”
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