Article:World Champion Higgins to recieve MBE

As you may have seen in the news, John Higgins will be awarded an MBE from The Queen in her New Year Honours List.

Higgins won the World Championship memorably in 1998, beating defending champion Ken Doherty 18-12. In the 1998 Snooker World Rankings, the World Championship win put him to Number 1, ahead of Stephen Hendry, at the time a 6-time World Champion who had held the World Number 1 spot for 8 seasons. He became only the third ever Scottish World Champion, succeeding Hendry and Walter Donaldson in 1947 and 1950.

Higgins won the first three ranking events in the 1999 season, and was expected to dominate in the way that Hendry had before him. However, he became a father during that season, and he was unable to maintain his standard. Given free reign to concentrate on snooker by his wife in 2006, Higgins came back to prominence in 2007, winning both The Masters and the World Championship for the second time. This propelled him back to Number 1 in the 2008 Snooker World Rankings.

Higgins will join Stephen Hendry, Steve Davis, Mark Williams, John Parrott and Jimmy White, all of whom have had recognition from the Queen in the past decade.

Higgins, 32, was "stunned" by the offer, but overall was delighted that snooker is getting recognition. He joked "Some people that have won MBEs have gone downhill a little bit afterwards; I don't know if they think I'm going downhill!"

Higgins certainly will hope to remain at the forefront of the game for many years to come.