Ah, Ronnie O’Sullivan has pulled out of a big tournament and everyone’s got their knickers in a twist about it. Like him or loathe him – and there are plenty of people in both camps – it’s high time for a blog on the matter. First and foremost, I’m not a mental health expert, so I’m not going to touch on any of that – there are many people far more qualified to comment on such things, not least Ronnie himself. So if there is something more serious going on psychologically, this will be irrelevant drivel, moreso than normal. And if that is proven to be the case I wish him all the best for any recovery needed.

For what it’s worth I suspect Ronnie simply didn’t feel on it this week. He’s both a perfectionist and an emotive player. He clearly didn’t like the way he played in the Championship League: he had tip issues, he may even have discarded his cue altogether. Only a week after some exhibitions in China where he won every match and scored freely. What started out as paid practice unravelled into a bit of an embarrassment and I reckon he’s said to himself “enough’s enough, I can’t play in the Masters like this, I’ll get back on the practice table instead”.

I’ve followed Ronnie O’Sullivan for over 30 years. I’ve watched him in exhibitions, World finals, Masters finals, I’ve seen him make a 147, I was there for the English Open final v Kyren Wilson where he had 99% pot success. I’m not a ‘fanboy’, I appreciate good snooker in any form, it’s my favourite sport – and it just so happens that for much of my life a lot of that snooker happens to have been provided by Ronnie O’Sullivan.

To understand Ronnie is like trying to learn differential calculus whilst being chased by lions: completely impossible. At any given time he’s equally likely to score a mesmeric century, steal a frame from nowhere, play left handed for a laugh, smash the reds in rage or punch the table. He actually did most of these in the space of 24 hours in the Championship League. And that’s why some people love him and some people hate him.

So let’s break down the arguments:

Come on, it’s the Masters, it’s a Triple Crown tournament!

Ronnie has won 8 Masters titles, you all know that. He’s also lost 6 finals, 3 of which were in deciders. He also had humbling defeats to Judd Trump (10-4) and Stephen Hendry (10-5), and the other one was that famous loss to Steve Davis where the Nugget did something a job on him from 8-4 down to win 10-8.

I suspect these actually rankle with Ronnie far more than he lets on. In the other two “Triple Crown” tournaments, he’s only lost one final each (both to Selby by the way). He’s an elite sportsman, he likes winning and hates losing, regardless of what he might say in public. I recall an interview before his 7^th win over Joe Perry where he alluded to the fact his record in the tournament “ain’t actually that good, I’ve lost the same amount of finals as I’ve won” which tells me it plays on his mind a bit.

Until last year, all of Ronnie’s Ally Pally wins came in a burst from 2014-2017. At this time, it was the peak of the him v Selby rivalry, they were both far and away the best players in the world. If one of them lost early you knew the other would go deep. Robertson, Ding, Higgins, Williams and Murphy did their best to contain them but there was always an inevitability in the big events that one of Ronnie or Selby would be having a big say in proceedings, it would take something very special to stop them.

However, Mark Selby never seemed to catch fire at Ally Pally, his last win coming in 2013 and he lost the next year’s final. His other two Masters wins were in Wembley where he got to 3 finals in 5 years. He hasn’t been beyond the quarters since 2014, despite winning all four of his world titles since then and holding the world number one spot for long stretches. One of the sport’s oddities in that respect.

The Masters, due to its very nature, is very hard to win. There’s something of an inverse lottery to it because certainly 10 of the players in the 16 man draw would not be shock-winners. There’s no room to play yourself into form because you’ll be playing a top-16 player, all the matches to the final are single session so it’s very much a spotlight. Out of all the BBC tournaments, it’s the one I reckon would scare me the most if I thought my game wasn’t spot on. If I also happened to be a renowned perfectionist with background anxiety issues in a venue I don’t particularly like – more on that below – it’s definitely the one I’d dodge.

 “Disrespecting the sport”

By pulling out? Is he really? This is a man who has won everything there is to win and done it in such a style that he’s put a lot of bums on a lot of seats while he did so. People can have their own opinions on this but I firmly believe that without him at times, certainly after Hendry retired and before Robertson/Selby got motoring, snooker would have been fucked.

Higgins and Williams have always been there of course, but Higgins disrespected the sport slightly more by being caught offering to throw frames for money, and Mark Williams – brilliant as he is – simply didn’t have the same ‘star quality’. You can try this experiment in any town in the UK – stop someone on the street and ask them to name a snooker player… every single one will say Ronnie O’Sullivan. He owes the sport nothing, at times he single-handedly kept it in the public eye either with with his off-table antics or on-table brilliance, usually both. You only have to look at the BBC website to see how “Ronnie-centric” the snooker-verse is presented to outsiders.

This doesn’t mean he can do whatever the fuck he likes and it also doesn’t mean I’m blind to Ronnie’s faults, chiefly his somewhat childish nature. Before anyone berates him, I’d invite them to read up on his own upbringing/teenage years. Then, against that backdrop, try to get good at a sport where there is no substitute for countless hours of mind-numbingly dull practice. For the same reasons I have a lot of respect for Mark Selby too, by the way. Again, this doesn’t give Ronnie ‘carte-blanche’ to act the twat by any stretch of the imagination, but walk a mile in his shoes before you judge a man etc. We simply don’t know what’s going on but I very much doubt when assessing whether to pull out of a tournament, “respect for the sport” is on any player’s mind. They’re not robots, they have emotions and feelings, they can do what they want.

Pulling out of tournaments isn’t disrespectful per se. What is potentially disrespectful is turning up to get £30k guaranteed first round appearance money, not caring, losing 6-0 and just laughing all the way to the bank. Ronnie hasn’t opted to do this. I remember the 2021 season where he was playing on when the frame was mathematically lost just to clear the colours without even trying for snookers, purely because it was his right to do so. I remember him telling a referee “don’t start” in a World final, knowing he was secretly miked up for his own documentary. For fuck’s sake he once hit a tournament official. These actions are far more disrespectful to the game than pulling out of the Masters, so for better or for worse, this allegation is nothing new. If you are new to the Ronnie show and this is surprising information, I’m afraid you’re in for a bumpy ride…

“Terrible Ambassador for snooker”

At no point in his entire career has Ronnie claimed to be an ambassador for the game, quite the opposite really, for a lot of his career he’s said he hates it and wouldn’t recommend it to others. We’ve had controversy after controversy on and off the table – there were the early years of partying with the Rolling Stones and forfeiting the Irish Masters for failing a drugs test. We’ve had quitting games mid-frame, towels over heads, spats with refs, asking a reporter to “give me a nosh” via a translator during a press conference. I’m not glorifying this conduct, far from it – he usually apologises too – I’m just pointing out he’s a loose cannon and has been for decades. I don’t expect him to be hosting dinner parties with Ferrero Rocher anytime soon.

He’s disdainful of media commitments and has made a mockery of interviews: the robot voice, the Australian accent, “Raaaanking points”, “just looking for that cue action”, all of these when he was past the age of 40. I’ve lost count of him absolutely demolishing someone before saying he played awfully and giving nothing away post-match. When he does speak his mind – “numpties”, “the standard’s so bad”, “this place smells of piss” – he gets lambasted for it so he can’t really win. The press are totally wise to Ronnie effect too, they know if he says something vaguely controversial then it will become a bigger story than what is going on in the actual tournament. I happen to believe he joined Eurosport not only to earn cash but also to neatly avoid being the subject matter of discussion most of the time.

Let’s not muck about – Ronnie can sometimes come across as a bit of a tit with the media. Perhaps he does this deliberately. Of course, he probably doesn’t care what people think, but sometimes he looks back at his own words and is surprised how they were interpreted, or has to clarify them in some way. He shoots from the lip and there’s usually quite a few grains of truth remaining once the initial controversy evaporates. There have been plenty of times when I wish he would have phrased something differently, or even just said “no comment”, he’d have saved himself a lot of hassle over the years. But Ronnie doesn’t, he fronts up and speaks his mind, whether you want to hear it or not. And I respect that far more than some anodyne instantly forgettable remarks personally.

Look at say, Leo Messi or Roger Federer, they keep their opinions to themselves on most things because their sports are massive and they’d lose multi million sponsorship deals if they rocked the boat. Ronnie doesn’t have that problem, he just says what he thinks and even if you don’t agree with him – from his sport to other sports to politics through to the state of the toilets in a leisure centre in Crawley – the fact he bothers to get off the fence at all when most other public figures go down the more corporate-and-polished approach is part of the package really.

If you’re looking to Ronnie to be an ambassador for the game, you’re looking in the wrong place. He’s 49 now, he’s not going to change. Mark Selby, Kyren Wilson, Judd Trump, Mark Williams, Ding Junhui – these guys are your ambassadors, Ronnie’s just the one who is very bloody good at the game but doesn’t care for all that comes with it.

“People have bought tickets to see him”

The Masters tickets go on sale the day after the final the previous year. And it usually sells out in seconds. Nobody bought a ticket knowing full well they were off to see O’Sullivan v Higgins. They may have bought a ticket for the Sunday afternoon session knowing the defending champion was playing, however…

Pulling out of tournaments is nothing new to our Ronald – remember he pulled out of an entire season once in 2012-13. Certainly anyone who has charted his progress since about 2016ish should know he’s been picking and choosing his tournaments for years so this isn’t exactly “out of character”. He’s pulled out of this very tournament twice: whilst it was surprising it’s not completely shocking.

Ronnie has been honest about this for a very long time, and has had great success since deploying it so nothing is going to change. To the point where I’m perplexed every time people get up in arms about any of his withdrawals. It can and will happen several times a season, including in perceived big events like the Masters, Champion of Champions etc. He’s not a performing chimp, he’s a self-employed man playing a very difficult game and sometimes he simply doesn’t fancy it.

If you’re buying a ticket specifically to see him, you need to read the snooker news more – anyone with a reasonable knowledge of the game would tell you not to buy a ticket until he’s turned up for his first round match nowadays. I know some get annoyed that he does it the night before, but again this isn’t a particularly new development. It’s like when people book hotels with shit reviews on Tripadvisor and then seem surprised that they turn out to be shit – granted it’s annoying but I can’t understand why they didn’t do some research before paying their cash. Note: as a parent, I appreciate it’s different if you want to treat your child to see him but there don’t tend to be many kids at snooker so that’s a negligible amount of people to counterbalance the argument.

“But he always seems to be magically up for the events in Saudi and China”

Well yeah – they pay him massive appearance fees to attend, in addition to any official prize money. We’ll never fully know what the size of these fees are, or indeed if anyone else gets them… Judd Trump recently announcing he’ll be picking and choosing will be interesting as I suspect he’ll have the same paymasters. At a conservative guess I’d imagine Ronnie O’Sullivan gets more for turning up before a ball is potted than the actual quarter finalists get in any given tournament held abroad. Both he and the promoter know that if they want it to look like a prestigious tournament, he has to be there, so they may as well sweeten the deal. Over here, I do believe, the promoter is WST themselves so there are no extra fees or special treatment available… and money talks.

“Hello mate, you know that job you’re probably going to do anyway but were unsure if you can be arsed, how about I give you £50k just to definitely turn up? By the way we’ll send a car to the airport and put you up in a posh hotel, comps, you just have to smile for the cameras”. Every single person reading this would do it. And if you don’t, I have no idea why not. Furthermore, his management usually bolt on a couple of exhibitions too, so from getting on the plane (First Class of course) to getting home, regardless of results, he probably comes back six figures richer. Nice work if you can get it – hats off to the lad really, I’d bloody do it if I got the chance. Anyone who gets the hump with this approach is, to me, simply not living in the real world.

Aside from cash in the pocket, Ronnie is open that he and the top players are simply looked after better abroad. They get VIP treatment. They’re not playing in leisure centres or draughty venues that have just hosted the darts. It’s not particularly fair that he and Judd Trump get cars from the airport when all the other players trying to get to, say, Wuxi, have to do a planes trains and automobiles fandango. But then, as ‘the talent’ that’s just the way it goes. Hollywood stars get better treatment on film sets than the supporting cast, that’s life. And if, as a lower ranked player, you take umbrage with this, then you’ll have to simply start winning as much as them to go from supporting cast to leading man. Or maybe, just maybe, WST will heed these sort of warnings and realise that they might want to deploy a bit of luxury for the players with all this cash they’re getting from the TV companies, sponsors, levies, questionable regimes and whoever else is swelling the coffers.

Say what you like about Ronnie O’Sullivan but he’s very much served his time on the circuit – windswept nights in Norbreck Castle, countless pro-ams, the Premier League. And as he nears 50 he’s taken the view that if all is not well with his game and there’s nothing else to make it comfortable or fun for him, then fuck it. As I’ve said above, if Ronnie was only thinking of his bank account then he would turn up, lose without potting a ball, and trouser five figures for his trouble. Which he didn’t…

But it’s his home tournament!

Most tournaments Ronnie plays in, he has the crowd behind him. It’s not like simply being in London means he gets any more support than he does in, say, Hong Kong or Shanghai.

I’ve also been to Ally Pally a few times and although it’s undeniably great for the fans, there’s definitely something of a bear-pit atmosphere. I’ve never been a professional snooker player but I suspect it’s one of those places where if you’re not playing well it can feel very lonely and exposed. Ronnie himself described it as “rowdy”.  

He’s not been shy in hiding his dislike of Ally Pally as a venue – “disgusting”, “cold”, “it’s all bins and car parks”. Just because we think it’s a brilliant tournament doesn’t mean he does. Remember Roy Keane saying the whole Wembley/FA Cup thing was a load of bollocks to him? Ronnie clearly feels that way about Ally Pally – and I suspect he’s not alone, even WST apologist in chief Shaun Murphy said it’s obvious that they’re an afterthought to the darts and that the facilities aren’t the best. Yet again, grains of truth in Ronnie’s previous remarks, the warning signs were always there.

In summary, why pull out then?

Ronald Antonio O’Sullivan pulled out of the Masters in 2013 and 2020. Remind me who won the World Title later on in both years?

I’m not suggesting this is a definite indicator he’ll win the Worlds this year, but it tells me he’s concentrating on that. The 8-8-8 is on his mind. He should really have waltzed to it last year and I suspect it annoyed him that he didn’t and given a run of Bingham-Jones-Wilson it was potentially the ‘easiest’ of his 8 to win. All this might come off, it might not, but I don’t think it’s the end of the world that he’s not playing in the Masters.

Right, it starts tomorrow, let’s just enjoy the snooker.

© Long Form Snooker 2025