“I just want to play snooker, that’s what I came here to do. It was the worst thing he could have done, it just fired me up, I was never missing after he missed that easy red.
“I’m not bothered, I know I am in the right. Sometimes he just needs to be put back in his place.
“I’m sure he’ll come to me someday and say he was in the wrong.”
O’Sullivan meanwhile declared: “It was just nothing. Maybe I read too much into it.
“But it seemed a little bit like something you do down the snooker club when you’re an amateur and trying to put them off.
“I’m not going to let it go, so I pulled him up on it. No hard feelings, Mark played better and deserved his victory.
“Sometimes you just have to say something. I’m 45, I’ve been around the block so many times I know every move in the book.”