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Four top players took bribes - Alex Higgins

Former Crucible champion Alex Higgins revealed he turned down offers to throw matches during his playing career © Getty Images

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Two-time world snooker champion Alex Higgins has claimed he knows of four top players who have taken bribes to lose tournament matches.

The Ulsterman, who won his Crucible titles in 1972 and 1982, also revealed he had turned down a number of offers to throw matches during his playing days.

"The names [of the four players] would shock the public if it was proved," Higgins told the Sunday Life. "But I know there are plenty of repulsive professional players who have thrown games for bookies.

"Just because they wear crisp white shirts doesn't make them clean - it's all going on right under people's noses."

Higgins, who is set to appear in the new World Seniors Championship in November despite a long-term battle with throat cancer, says he turned down £18,000 to throw his Benson & Hedges Masters quarter-final against Perrie Mans in 1979 and a further £20,000 to lose at the Irish Masters in 1989.

"I wanted nothing to do with any of them. I couldn't live with myself if I did it."

The 61-year-old's comments come in the wake of the recent claims of match-fixing allegations made against his unrelated namesake John Higgins, who is currently suspended from tournaments pending an inquiry into the scandal.

The Scot, who exited this year's world championship at the second-round stage at the hands of Steve Davis, reiterated his innocence.

"I have been accused in the media of cheating," Higgins said. "I have been accused of planning to fix matches.

"To both of those charges, I am 100% innocent. I will clear my name.

"In the last week I have experienced a whole range of emotions: despair, frustration, anger, rage and most of all a sense of betrayal.

"Snooker is my life. Snooker has been good to me and I hope that over the years I have been good for snooker. In my 18 years playing professional snooker I have never deliberately missed a shot, never mind intentionally lost a frame or a match."

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