Don’t worry, Harry, bad boys can turn it around and still be national treasures.. just ask Ronnie, Tyson and Ben

His conviction looked more rushed than one of his dubious defensive clearances... his innocence could be proved on appeal

RONNIE O’SULLIVAN spoke with chilling honesty about the failings of young snooker players months before his famed verbal assault at the Crucible.

In April, he went after himself, lamenting five years of his early career lost through a destructive lifestyle.

“First thing in the morning I was having a drink and having a joint just to function,” he told Eurosport.

“I’d come into a bit of money, so thought I could do what I wanted,” said the man who assaulted a press officer at the 1996 World Championship and was stripped of his 1998 Irish Masters title after cannabis was found in his blood.

O’Sullivan learned from his early mistakes and is now, at 44, second favourite for 2020 Sports Personality of the Year.

The favourite is world heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury, a former alcoholic and cocaine addict who failed a pre-fight drugs test and was once so wild his wife said “they should put him in a straitjacket”. Remember last year’s winner, Ben Stokes?

Or rather that ugly brawl outside a Bristol nightclub in 2017, which resulted in an affray trial (in which he was acquitted), an eight-game England ban, £30,000 fine and calls for him to never represent his country again?

Thank God, he did, as the disgraced cricketer became an English sporting god with some of those who called for his head demanding a knighthood.

I doubt there will be many calls to knight Harry Maguire any time soon, but you never know because our attitude to sport’s so-called bad boys can change with the wind.

His initial conviction on a Greek island for assault, resisting arrest and bribery looked more rushed than one of his dubious defensive clearances, and his innocence could be proven in his appeal. But for now he’s going to have to live with the public shame, and it won’t go away for some time. However, the badboys-turned-national-treasures mentioned above prove you can turn it around.

The snooker player, fighter and cricketer also disprove the commonly peddled stereotype that going off the rails in a sporting context is exclusively a footballer’s disease.

One newspaper yesterday screamed about Maguire’s “squalid and shameful” behaviour, wailed about English football once again losing its “moral compass” and pondered if England’s players “will ever learn”. Before obviously homing in on Maguire “quaffing” obscenely priced champagne. Which is at the core of most of the resentment. The feeling that young working-class men don’t deserve the finer things in life and are guaranteed to disgrace themselves if their undeserved wealth takes them above their station.

Oh, how Raheem Sterling would have been slaughtered if he’d been ruled out of the England squad through testing positive for coronavirus after going to Usain Bolt’s lavish birthday party.

There’s a misconception that, compared with today’s “over-paid prima donnas”, past generations were angels.

Close observers with memories would argue that, if anything, the opposite is true.

An example. In 1984, Liverpool’s squad were involved in a drunken brawl with themselves in a Tel Aviv square that involved urinating on tables, legless punch-throwing and black eyes.

No one found out, or cared, especially when they won the European Cup the next week.

Some argue Maguire should not have been holidaying in a public place and, if he had to, he should have had bodyguards.

So a 27-year-old should remain locked inside the grounds of a gated villa after a long season of sacrifices that starts again in a fortnight?

Or, if he must get out, walk round like J-Lo so he can be hammered for losing touch with his roots?

Maguire deserves no sympathy. But he does deserve the chance to prove he has the right character to captain his club and play for his country. He probably will. Because the great thing about public shamings is they can make you grow up like nothing else.

Ask some of our real sporting legends.