Neil Robertson celebrated being named on the Australia Day 2025 Honours List by thrashing tour rookie Antoni Kowalski 5-1 at the Machineseeker German Masters.
The Thunder from Down Under was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the General Division on Sunday. Similar to the MBE, the OAM is the highest civilian honour that can be bestowed by the Australian government.
The 2010 World Champion is widely regarded as one of the greats of modern snooker and is by far and away Australia's greatest ever player. However, despite winning the BetVictor English Open earlier this season, he has work to do to qualify automatically for April's World Championship. He's currently ranked 20th in the world with only the top 16 making it straight to the Crucible, which he failed to qualify for last year.
There are signs that his form is returning though having beaten John Higgins at the recent Masters in London, before bowing out against eventual winner Shaun Murphy. This afternoon's encounter saw Robertson fire home breaks of 57, 57 and 102 on his way to victory. Next up he faces Hammad Miah, who scored a surprise 5-2 win over Chris Wakelin.
"I always hoped that one day I would receive this honour. I was never really sure if it would happen or not, but to get the email saying I was up for consideration made me excited. I hoped it would go through and when I found out the news that I was on the honours list it made me feel so proud. Definitely the proudest moment of my career for sure," said Melbourne cueman Robertson.
"A lot of people know who I am in Australia, but snooker is such a tough sport to break through with there because we are so good at so many sports. Most of them are outdoor sports, it is tough to compete with those, but this is massive recognition for what I've done and hopefully it will encourage me to do greater things."
Scotland's 31-time ranking event winnner Higgins secured his progression with a hard fought 5-3 defeat of Mark Davis.
Runs of 68, 91, 53, 70 and 124 helped the Glaswegian over the line today. However, his defeat at the hands of Robertson at the Masters saw him surrender a 5-1 lead to lose 6-5 and looking back, Higgins concedes that was a loss which hit him hard.
"This is a sport that has given me so much over the years but it begins to take your soul bit by bit. This has been a good sport for me, but as you fall down the rankings it can begin to take that bit of goodness. It is a brutal sport sometimes," admitted Higgins.
"That was a good win today. Mark has always been really tough and given me some tough battles. It is always a good game when I play him and that was another one."
World Champion Kyren Wilson recovered from his Masters final loss to beat Hong Kong's Ka Wai Cheung 5-3, while former International Champion Zhang Anda beat Graeme Dott 5-4.