Ronnie O’Sullivan exclusive: Why star isn’t bigger than snooker ahead of record World Championship title bid

Only a few yards from the stage door of the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, gateway to a timeless sporting tardis where a potting potpourri of bow-tied giants have roamed since 1977, something stirs. And something whirrs.

The tills at a sporting memorabilia shop bearing Ronnie O’Sullivan’s name – aptly titled the Ronnie O’Sullivan snooker shop – move faster at this time of the year than the great man himself. Which is saying something.

It will be interesting to see what makes more over the next few weeks on the sport’s grandest stage: Ronnie or his shop?

O’Sullivan snagged £500,000 in these parts after claiming his seventh world title a year ago from an overall haul of over £3m since snooker’s man of steel first washed up in the Steel City as a much-hyped wunderkind in 1993, the same year he would become the youngest UK champion at 17.

Which equates to £100,000 per trip (without being adjusted for inflation or elation) from his 30-year body of work at the Crucible. Nice work if you can get it. Not that money is his main motivation.

With over 75 major trophies and counting picked up worldwide and over £12.5 million pocketed in prize money alone, he was made for life beyond Essex a long time ago.

It must be said, O’Sullivan is in fine form before his latest busman’s holiday in South Yorkshire where he combines his passion for running with the run of the ball.

Ronnie and his pop-up shop, complete with a full-size table, World Championship trophy and a strong waft of Rocket-fuelled nostalgia, have been in full flow over the past two years.

It felt like the engraver was still etching his name on the ancient silverware, first lifted by the 15-time world champion Joe Davis in 1927, while the ‘seven’ memorabilia – a salvo of bandanas, hoodies and photo frames – was wheeled out to a salivating public last year. Spotting an opportunity has always been one of O’Sullivan’s greatest assets.

Is there a box of mugs, fridge magnets or underpants with a number eight planked somewhere in the shop ready for the king’s coronation in May?

“Yeah. Number eight, mate. Get it on the cup,” he laughs. “I don’t know mate. It’s a big ask, it’s a big ask, isn’t it?

“But we’ll try, we’ll give it a go mate. I feel alright. I feel like I’ve paced myself pretty well this year.

“I’ve had a few up and downs, but feel like I’ve come out the other side of it.

“Not collapsed, or lost the plot, but stayed in a good place and at some point, I’ll just let the snooker gods take over.”

‘Climb the mountain’

O’Sullivan has lifted the Hong Kong Masters before a world record snooker audience of 9,000 fans in the city’s Coliseum and Champion of Champions in Bolton this season, which would be a career highlight for the majority of players, but has curiously found the ranking events a tougher assignment. Quarter-final appearances in the UK Championship and Welsh Open are his most productive returns so far.

He was forced to sit out the elite eight-man Tour Championship in Hull earlier this month after failing to garner enough ranking points via the one-year list, alongside fellow world champions Judd Trump, Neil Robertson, Mark Williams and John Higgins it must be noted, but he does not view such eccentric goings on as a major mishap.

“I don’t buy into that philosophy,” he said. “There are ebbs and flows. All you can do is work hard, do what you’ve got to do and try to stay fresh, try to stay ready for your time.

“My time was at the World Championship, in Hong Kong and at the Champion of Champions last year.”

Form is temporary, but class is permanent in any sport.

“Sometimes you’ve got to start again. You climb the mountain then you’ve got down to the bottom, you climb the mountain then go back down to the bottom,” he said.

“You can’t just stay on top all the time. For me, it’s just about consolidating and not losing the plot trying to stay on top all the time. It’s just not possible.

“But I’m ready, I’m fresh and looking forward to it.”

This could almost be defined as the very definition of living over the shop in professional sport with O’Sullivan pursuing a unique slice of sporting immortality that has never been achieved in snooker’s modern televised era.

He is hardly Granville of the old green baize, but O’Sullivan has always been open all hours when it comes to serving his adoring public over four decades of competing inside the familiar and unforgiving little hothouse. Over 17 exacting days where a champion needs to win 71 frames to join the rich tapestry of snooker history.

Ray Reardon reached six titles in the 1970s, Steve Davis six in the 1980s and Stephen Hendry seven in the 1990s. Eight is the magic number, the holy grail for thousands of waistcoat wannabees, but there can be only one.

This is the joint which made them all, a claustrophobic 902-seat arena synonymous with snooker, which has remained a remarkable constant in the life and times of Ronnie. A vexing venue at times, when you think of his 18-14 loss to Mark Selby in the 2014 final from 10-5 clear, but one that keeps reeling him in.

Much like it did for the timeless figures of Davis, Hendry, Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins and his old pal Jimmy ‘Whirlwind’ White, a bloke who owes much of his popularity to contesting six World Championship finals without becoming a made man.

As one of the finest British sportsmen to pursue their vocation in life, O’Sullivan enjoys raucous support wherever he roams because his youthful, attacking outlook has stood the test of time. He has been blessed with a natural ability to please the masses. As fearless as Nigel Benn when he goes to work.

Perched atop his darkened domain, the Crucible is where he became world champion in 2001, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2020 and 2022, set the record for the fastest 147 of all time in 1997 in five minutes and eight minutes of totemic bliss, a break that looks as fresh as Ronnie over a quarter of a century later, and the spot where he first played with both hands against an irate Alain Robidoux in 1996.

Robidoux later apologised when he realised the 20-year-old O’Sullivan was not experimenting with ambidexterity for a laugh.

‘Legend of our sport’

It was either Morgan Freeman or Darren Morgan who said that geology is about the study of time and pressure. Green baize geology is similar. Both are crucial to solving the Crucible conundrum.

In a fair transaction of goods, snooker has made O’Sullivan, but he has been magnificent value for money since he set out on an unknown destination long before the invention of Google Maps in 1992, heading off into the wilds without any guarantee of a gold rush.

Especially when the UK government’s ban on tobacco sponsorship in professional sport left snooker needing an inhaler beyond the 2005 World Championship.

A vast audience of TV viewers never deserted the sport when it was reduced to only six ranking events in 2006 and millions continued to revel in it across the continent via Eurosport.

When England won the Ashes in 2005 and cricket was broadcast by terrestrial television on Channel 4, eight sessions of snooker over the year attracted a larger audience than the peak viewing figures at any point during that Ashes series.

Before the Barry Hearn era began in 2010, snooker was a sport badly requiring inspired leadership, but O’Sullivan continued to keep his end of the bargain with a supreme display in lifting the 2008 world title with an 18-8 win over Ali Carter. He recorded his ninth maximum of a career haul of 15 at the Crucible with Carter making his own sublime 147.

Even when he offers opinions that are not to the liking of those who run the shop, there is no way they would ever return Ronnie. He is as priceless to potting as Tiger Woods is to putting.

Everybody knows it. Even those who do not find him their cup of Darjeeling after he recently lamented the general direction of travel in snooker, claiming the sport needed “at least another £50m” to support the professional tour.

The comments were quickly dismissed by the World Snooker Tour, who are overcoming the hurdles of a global pandemic with prize money at this staging of the World Championship amounting to £2.35m before China returns to staging events next season.

“If Ronnie took advantage of his own massive global popularity to be a true ambassador for snooker then he could work with us to drive the sport forward for his benefit and for the sport as a whole.”

‘Fresh ideas’

While appreciating such sentiments, O’Sullivan does not intend to devote his time to attending regular meetings when he does not see the radical change he seeks.

“I don’t see what I can add to it,” he said. “I’m not in control of making decisions. I look at a lot of American sports and I think: ‘How are they operating?’

“I look at the way tennis, golf and F1 are operating. You see the way Liberty are doing it in Formula One and see the people they’ve got working on the job.

“You just think: ‘Well, that’s what you need’. I’m not sure they share that idea. I think they want to keep everything in-house and have their own people doing it.

“If they want to do that, that’s fine, but if you are trying to compete with other sports and want to project the game in a certain way, sometimes you need to bring in a few consultants that have been really successful in some of the big sports.

“Just to give it some fresh ideas, but listen, those are just my ideas. They’ve got to do what they’ve got to do. I’m far too busy to waste my time.

“Because that’s what it comes down to: time. If I give this time, is there going to be any end product to it?

“And if there isn’t, I’ve got too many other things that I’ve got going on and I’m not prepared to put them on the backburner.

“All I have is time. And I don’t have half a day, or a day or a few days to invest my time into something that basically comes to nothing.”

O’Sullivan has been compared to Roger Federer, the graceful 20-time major tennis champion, in recent weeks by both Dawson and fellow professional Anthony McGill, who said he is as talented in snooker as the Swiss genius is on a court. O’Sullivan’s performing snooker as a religious experience is hardly an outlandish comparison.

“For the standard he plays to – does any sports person out there play to a higher standard of their sport than Ronnie?

“There might be people who match it like Roger Federer in tennis, but nobody is as good at their game as what Ronnie is at this.”

‘Bigger than any player’

The fact he is mentioned in the same breath as Federer tells you enough about O’Sullivan’s natural talent and ability to carry the enriching sport beyond its natural confines well into his 40s.

With 1198 career centuries made, he basks in the limelight and astonishingly also remains the fastest man on two legs in snooker with an average shot time of only 17.23 seconds.

He is a sporting genius, the ultimate entertainer with a timeless snooker brain, an original of the species who works to the beat of ball-thumping leather, but has always been a maverick in refusing to bow to conformity.

It is his trademark in never knowing what you are going to get on or off the table that fascinates and infuriates.

“He often compares snooker to golf and tennis, but I would challenge him as to whether for his part he elevates the sport and acts as a role model like a Rory McIlroy or Roger Federer,” said Dawson. “We are striving to take snooker to a higher level, but we need the players to be ambassadors in public.”

O’Sullivan transcends snooker and there are millions who feel he is a bigger draw than the sport he performs as much as plays, but he refuses to accept that his is the only name above the shop.

Flogging snooker without O’Sullivan is a bit like tennis confronting a future without Federer, but time moves on. And time waits for no man. Not even O’Sullivan, who feels he has another four or five good years to set a new benchmark in his pursuit of the promised land.

“I can go around the world playing snooker, but there is only so much you can do on your own,” he said.

“Snooker is bigger than any one player so it takes a joint effort. We need all the players to participate and do their bit for the game.

“It is tough to put all that onto one person. Every player needs to have their role in it.

“We can sit here and discuss what we would change all day, but I choose to just focus my energies on what I can change and what I can do.

“And having a good impact on snooker in my own way.”

‘Tough situation’

The crux of the matter for many aspiring players seems to be cash, or a lack of it, swirling around in the lower reaches of the sport.

It could be argued O’Sullivan and the top men enjoy a dynasty because they gobble up the goodies simply because they are built to win matches and money. Which defines the cut-throat nature of sport in any field.

Unlike in golf, where players compete against a field, the course and their technique knowing they will get a shot, snooker is brutal head-to-head combat with only a cue stick to defend yourself. And that is only any good if you are at the table.

Even O’Sullivan can suffer a whitewash without being miles off his best as he discovered twice this season against Ding Junhui (6-0) in the UK Championship and Tian Pengfei (5-0) at the Welsh Open.

When you are struggling to make a living from the sport, this prompts much discussion about how a fairer slice of the pie can be distributed.

UK champion Mark Allen has wallowed in a whopping £550,500 on the one-year list, but contrast such earnings with Jimmy Robertson sitting with £31,500 in 50th spot in the standings. Compare this to Ian Poulter, the 50th man in European golf’s one-year list, who has picked up £248,000 from two events.

O’Sullivan is not the only figure to raise his head above the parapet prior to the annual reckoning in Sheffield.

Jack Lisowski suggested the 128-player circuit should be halved to make the finances run further while Neil Robertson was in agreement with O’Sullivan for making “good points” about some “soulless” venues beyond the teeming outposts such as the Crucible, Alexandra Palace in London, the Barbican in York, Tempodrom in Berlin and the Hong Kong Coliseum.

Yet when O’Sullivan enters the debate, he seems to stir up a hornet’s nest simply because he is the sport’s headline act. Like Hurricane Higgins in the past, what he says matters and he refuses to hold back when the mood takes him.

Even if you find his gripes as disagreeable as being forced to go for a long pot from tight on the baulk cushion with the reds splattered everywhere, you could never accuse O’Sullivan of being dull.

He has spoken to Dawson about airing his views in public with the pair also apparently sharing their respective visions.

“World Snooker have their own ship, have got their own people and run it how they want to run it,” he said.

“That is fine, but I think they’re at a point where there are a lot of people complaining and it is hard to keep everybody quiet.

“So I think you are going to have this stuff resurfacing when people keep talking about it.

“It’s a tough situation they’re in because a lot of people are not happy. And how do you keep them quiet? It’s a tough one.”

‘In control’

O’Sullivan has a three-year agreement to play in India, Thailand and at the returning Shanghai Masters in China next season beyond the UK-based events. How does he see snooker and himself evolving in a post-pandemic world?

“I think they’ll probably get some tournaments back in China, but it’s not difficult to do that,” he said. “So they’ll probably get back to where they were pre-Covid. I don’t see it getting any better than that.

“Listen, if the players are happy with that, that’s great. I’ve geared my interest towards snooker, but I’m much more focused on being in control and being in charge of what I do with my time.

“That is around other things to do with snooker. More like the coaching, merchandise and clothing products for snooker players to wear to be comfortable.

“At some point, I’m in the process of creating my own brand of snooker cues, tables and accessories. It would be nice to have that. I think that is what snooker fans would like to see.

“I think that is where I can have a real positive impact on snooker.”

A bit like The Secret Millionaire, O’Sullivan was tailed by a camera crew during last year’s run to becoming the oldest world champion of all time, at the age of 46 years and 148 days, of the modern era, overtaking his old mentor Reardon’s 1978 success aged 45 years and 203 days.

He admits he will miss their presence this year as he begins to climb table mountain all over again.

“I think they want me to sit down and start watching it in the next couple of weeks,” he said.

“They’re pretty happy with what they’ve got and have edited to where they need it to be edited.

“It’s near the end and hopefully will be on the screens in the next few months.

“In some way, it helped last year. It gave me that little booster. Like my mate said to me: ‘It was like an antibiotic’.

“You just needed that little bit. Having them there put that little bit more pressure on me and made me think: ‘Come on, get your finger out here’.

“In some ways, it would probably help to have them around again, but it is a costly operation.

“They’ve got what they’ve got and it’s time to move on from that one.”

For the ultimate showman, it will soon be Lights, Camera, Action in the most excoriating competition of all cue sports. Is this his time again? Are the snooker gods with him? Will fate be kind to him?

“This is the World Championship, this is a different test and there’s a lot of snooker to be played in Sheffield,” he said.

The last mile is often the hardest, but the muscle memory of 30 years at the Crucible coal face is invaluable.

For Rocket Ronnie, snooker GOAT, sporting prospector and part-time proprietor, the sale of the century would complete an ongoing O’Sullivan opus already beyond belief.

O’Sullivan’s Crucible golden years

• 2001: Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) 18-14 John Higgins (Sco)
• 2004: Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) 18-8 Graeme Dott (Sco)
• 2008: Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) 18-8 Ali Carter (Eng)
• 2012: Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) 18-11 Ali Carter (Eng)
• 2013: Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) 18-12 Barry Hawkins (Eng)
• 2020: Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) 18-8 Kyren Wilson (Eng)
• 2022: Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) 18-13 Judd Trump (Eng)

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