Neil Robertson has revealed his wedding dance made him more nervous than any snooker match ever has, as he prepares to head to York for the defence of his UK Championship title.
Australian star Robertson married longtime partner Mille Fjelldal in the summer, meaning a postponed start to his season. Typically he soon made up for lost time, superbly claiming the English Open crown earlier this month.
Reflecting back on his August wedding in London, Robertson said: "I've never been more nervous in my life. It was the dance. Mille had a huge dress and I was so paranoid of tripping over it.
"For some stupid reason I went on YouTube and I was looking up wedding fails, the foundations collapsing from underneath or something like that.
"So we kept the dance pretty simple and I got through it. If I can get through the dance at the wedding, I can get through anything else that snooker can throw at you.
"Honestly, it was the best day of our lives. We were so lucky it could go ahead, it was amazing. The only downside was obviously that more family couldn't come from Australia, but other than that everything was wonderful.
"I didn't really get marriage, I didn't really want to get married. I thought, oh God it's so expensive. I was like, do we really need to be married, we've been together so long? But then on the day, I really kind of got it."
'Just complete relief'
Robertson's career has been an outstanding one, with his UK success last December the third time he had won the sport's biggest ranking event outside the World Championship.
The 39-year-old did so in quite extraordinary circumstances too, almost falling over the line to win 10-9 against Judd Trump at one o'clock in the morning in a tournament played behind closed doors in Milton Keynes.
Even now, Robertson can hardly believe the events of that night, which he ranks as more dramatic than the fabled climax to the 1985 world final, when Dennis Taylor beat Steve Davis on the final black.
