Player List

Robert Milkins

By far Milkins' best run of the 2009/10 season came in the Grand Prix as he got to the quarter-finals.

After winning three qualifying matches to get to the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow, he stunned Ali Carter and Mark King, both by 5-1 scorelines. Milkins, who sported a pink waistcoat to support a campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer driven by his manager Paul Mount, eventually saw his run ended by Mark Williams, losing 5-2.

Milkins also tasted silverware during the campaign as he won the third event in the short-lived Pro Challenge Series, beating Joe Jogia 5-3 in the final. "A couple of years ago the other players must have been thinking I was a plum draw, but now hopefully they will see my results and it will put some fear into them," said the Gloucester cueman, who finished the season with a leap of 19 places in the rankings to No 36.

The player based at the new South West Snooker Academy in his home town of Gloucester reached the quarter-finals of the 2008 Bahrain Championship. After beating Peter Ebdon 5-3, his run looked set to end in the last 16 when he trailed Michael Holt 4-0 at the interval. However he took the next five frames to win 5-4 and complete an amazing turnaround, the first time in his career that he had fought back from losing the opening four frames. Stephen Hendry then denied him a place in the semis.

Milkins, an aggressive break-builder who has been compared to Tony Drago for his speed around the table, has figured in one ranking semi-final – and came agonisingly close to going even further. He beat Marco Fu, Paul Hunter and Dave Harold to reach the last four of the 2005 Irish Masters at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin and played superbly to lead Matthew Stevens 8-5.

His best chance to wrap up victory came in the 15th frame but he ran out of position on 54. Stevens made an amazing clearance to claw back to 8-7 then won the last two frames to complete the comeback.

"I’d done all the hard work and I thought I deserved to win. I played well and my safety was brilliant. At least I proved that I can play well on a big stage and it’s a good tournament for me to reach the semi-finals," said Milkins, who has also been a quarter-finalist at the UK
Championship.

Milkins certainly has no shortage of self-confidence. "If I could play to my potential I would be winning tournaments," he once said.

He set a piece of snooker history in 2006 when he became the first player to make a maximum 147 in the qualifying rounds of the World Championship. But he lost that match against Mark Selby.

His partner Ela is due to give birth to their first child in November 2010.

Back to all Players