Kyren Wilson's heartbreaking admission after taking barman job during snooker struggles

Kyren Wilson admits he went back to working as a barman after his first season as a professional didn't go to plan back in 2011. The reigning champion by no means enjoyed a natural upward trajectory and ended up pulling pints at Barratts Snooker Club in Northampton for a period.

Wilson was still only a teenager when he was hit with his first setback and had to wait two years until he got back on the tour. Even then things by no means kicked off for him and by September 2015 he was still struggling and almost completely broke. 12 months ago and Wilson finally scaled to the summit of his sport.

He beat Jak Jones in the final having arrived at the Crucible as the 12th seed, but whilst the favourites all fell before him Wilson maintained his composure to claim victory in Sheffield.

Looking back on his stint behind a bar the 33-year-old from Kettering told : “‘I still believed in myself but it was quite soul-destroying out there."

He went on to add: “It’s a hard path back on to the tour,” Wilson says, “and you go from playing in perfect conditions in front of big crowds, against the world’s best players, to being in dingy snooker clubs on poor tables. It’s a really tough process because you know a first prize in an amateur event would be trebled with a first-round win on the world snooker tour. So I had to bide my time and keep plugging away.”

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Wilson concedes that, early on in his career, his game was nowhere near up to standard and life changes meant he and wife Sophie, then his girlfriend, were living off her salary before he and his family decided to give snooker one last go.

He said: “I’d got up to 72 in the world, which was quite an accomplishment. But my game wasn’t good enough to stay on tour because the seasoned pros would pick me off. I was too raw and had to rebuild my game. But there was a lot of pressure. My girlfriend, Sophie, who is my wife now, had moved down from north Wales to Kettering to live with me. I was living off her wage and we needed the bar work. My family and I also said: ‘Let’s give snooker one last shot.”

Wilson's more recent success has come amid notable issues award from the snooker table that he's had to deal with in his personal life. His father’s multiple sclerosis, a suspected brain tumour in his youngest son, a silent stroke for his wife and his mother’s breast cancer have all provided their own challenges.

Now Wilson is world No 2 and, at the Players Championship last month, beat Judd Trump 10-9 in a dramatic final. As he prepares to try and defend his title at the Crucible - only two men have done it over the past 20 years - he insists his triumph was one for the whole family.

He said: “I’m very hungry to do it again. I’m not ready to give up that tag of being the current world champion. But it’s not just me that’s world champion. It’s my whole family. We’re all world champions.”