Ronnie O’Sullivan has achieved pretty much all there is to achieve in snooker but admits the new £1million Home Nations Series has him excited for the season ahead.

O’Sullivan – arguably the most naturally-gifted player the sport has ever seen – has already won five World Championships, five UK Championships, six Masters titles and 28 ranking events during a 24-year professional career.

The 40-year-old is still going strong, firmly entrenched in the top 16 of the world rankings, and this year will try to add the lucrative Home Nations Series to his illustrious CV.

The series will comprise the new English Open, Irish Open and Scottish Open, as well as the existing Welsh Open, with 128 professional players in a flat draw and the matches being best-of-seven until the quarter-final stage.

Each of the Home Nations events will have total prize money of £366,000, with the winner to receive £70,000, while any player winning all four events will receive a huge £1million bonus.

And O’Sullivan believes the interest garnered in the series – which begins with the English Open in Manchester on October 10 – can only be good for snooker.

“The £1million bonus for winning all four tournaments is obviously something which has got people talking, and rightly so – it’s a life-changing amount of money,” explained the man affectionately known as ‘The Rocket’.

“It’s a positive new step and I think it helps that when you introduce a new series it comes with an added thing to take note of.

“It’s going to be hugely difficult for anyone to do it, but that’s what makes it special. But anything’s possible and there are plenty of players on the tour who are capable of doing it.

“It’s also special that there’s going to be every player on the circuit there. It’ll be best of seven which is quick-fire and makes things more exciting as players will have to be on their game straight away.

“It will create a storyline, whoever wins the English Open the interest will be there to see if the can win the next one, more so then any other tournaments which are back-to-back. “There’s a momentum, it’s like watching a six-part series, like the Sopranos. It doesn’t just end in Manchester it picks up again in Belfast and hopefully people are more likely to follow it.”

After the English Open in Manchester, the Home Nations Series picks back up with the Irish Open in Belfast from November 15 and the Scottish Open in Glasgow less than a month later.

The Welsh Open in Cardiff rounds things off from February 13 to February 19, where one player could rake in £1 million, and O’Sullivan believes the host cities have been well-chosen.

“I think it will great for the areas – it’ll be great for those venues to host top snooker at all, let alone a brand new series and I’m sure they’ll do a good job,” added O’Sullivan.

“Manchester and Glasgow especially are known for other sports, like football, tennis and cycling, so to have snooker there as well now will massively help them be known even more so for hosting top-level elite sports.

“It’s important that snooker explores new areas, but then at the same time it’s important it holds its legacy like keeping the World Championships at the Crucible in Sheffield.

“I’m looking forward to playing at each venue.”

Watch the English Open LIVE on Eurosport 1 and Quest, featuring daily studio analysis from Ronnie O’Sullivan, Jimmy White and Neal Foulds