Running: The Autobiography

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  But that wasn’t enough for most people. Most of the pundits thought I was a disgrace to the game and had brought shame on snooker.

  I think it was inevitable that I would walk out of a tournament. There was something in me that wouldn’t be satisfied until I’d done it. It was just a matter of time before I got into flight mode. It did cross my mind to get to the final and just not turn up. I thought that would be the ultimate thing to piss the authorities off. Part of me just wanted to have a go at World Snooker. I’m not saying this is the action of a man who was thinking at his most logical. But I also had people revving me up in the background. Friends were telling me they couldn’t get in the players’ lounge and they couldn’t get into matches, and they were encouraging me to have a pop at World Snooker. My mates the Scouse twins Bobby and Les were revving me up – nice guys, love ’em to pieces, but they are wind-up merchants. And they kept saying that the authorities were this and they were that, and they had a point; some of the people in the World Snooker hierarchy might be jobsworths who just want to make your life difficult but that’s my working environment and I have to get on with these people.

  It’s important for me to keep it sweet with the authorities, but the Scouse boys didn’t want to keep it sweet – nor did they want me to keep it sweet. I was a bit of an idiot for listening to them, really; for letting them wind me up. For a while it became like a war between me and the authorities because I felt my mates had been wronged. And that was just daft.

  When I walked out there was a fair old hooha. The fallout was worse than I imagined it would be. I couldn’t understand why they made such a big fuss. I wasn’t feeling well, I was depressed, Stephen Hendry’s had a bye: happy days. Then they fined me £25,000 and I thought, what the fuck! What’s happened here? They came down hard on me and I thought, I can’t do this again. When they fined me I was fuming. It made me feel even more alone.

  That night I just got absolutely smashed. I phoned my mate, one of the jockeys, and said: ‘Dino, we’re out, mate!’ He came over to the house and just assumed that the match was over. The Scouse twins, Bob and Les, were with me as well.

  When I got home I told Jo what had happened. Because I was so down, she became supportive again. That’s how it always worked. She said: ‘Don’t worry, it’s the best thing you’ve ever done. That’s your truth.’ I went: ‘My truth? That’s not good. I’ve just been fined twenty-five grand. That ain’t good.’

  I thought the fine was too heavy, but they were right to fine me. After all, I was a liability if they thought I could walk out in the middle of any match. And if the fans thought I might do that, maybe they’d do the same thing – or just not turn up in the first place.

  I sat down with Rodney Walker, who was then chairman of World Snooker, and told him I was depressed and had family issues but said I didn’t want to go into them. ‘I’m having a hard time, not finding it easy, and I cracked,’ I said. ‘As you know, I’m quite highly strung and when I get it in my head that I’m going to do something I do it, but it was really because of personal stuff going on at home.’ It was the truth – but not the entire truth. I didn’t tell him the bit about being so pissed off with World Snooker.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘No problem, glad you told me.’ But they still shoved it up me with the fine.

  Perhaps they also worried that I’d set a trend and other players would start walking out of matches, but I don’t reckon they had much to fear on that front. Other players aren’t mad enough to do it.

  The fans turned against me a bit. I got a couple of boos when I played a match in Preston, then when I played in the Masters at Wembley, which was the very next tournament. John Parrott was slating me, saying, if he isn’t stable then he should get his problems sorted out and come back to play snooker when he’s ready. I thought that was wrong – kicking a man when he’s down rather than showing a bit of empathy. Hendry was good about it. He said that for me to have done that I must have had a lot on my mind. But the others just said I had no excuse – if you’re a pro you just go out there and play.

  At the Masters the pressure was really on me. I’d just walked out, and everybody was asking what I’d be like; whether I’d play well, whether I’d even stay long enough to know if I was playing well. That was the tournament in which I beat Ding in the final and he started crying. The reason I won that tournament was because I was sitting at home on the Sunday when Ding was playing and he was really flying, and John Virgo said: ‘This is the new guard, this is the guy who’s going to take over the mantle from Ronnie O’Sullivan.’

  I went, cheeky bastard! I love John, but I thought, Christ, you’re writing my obit a bit premature, Virgo. It gave me a reason to go and win the tournament. Perfect motivation. I never said anything to John about it, but I remembered it and every time I was on that practice table I thought about what he had said, and how I had to shut my critics up.

  Ironically, then, it was Ding who I met in the final and he was playing really well. He went 2-0 up, and I thought, I’ve got a right battle on here. But I knew my form was okay – coming and going – but when it came it did so in spades. So I thought, wait till I’ve got a bit of form and just see how he responds with what I hit him with. I didn’t panic when he went 2-0 up, then it went 2-2, then 5-3 at the interval – I’d outplayed him, outfought him, by then, and he knew he was in for a hard match because I was playing some nice shots.

  Then it got to 9-3 and he wanted to walk out. Funny because Ding is the last person you’d expect to do something like that. Maybe he was taking a leaf out of my book. Ding started crying, and then it was the interval with me only needing one more frame, and he went to shake my hand. I thought about my own problems, and said to him: ‘No, mate. You can’t do that. They are going to ruin me, and they’ll ruin you if you do it. You cannot do it.’

  Well, when I say that’s what I said to him, it’s what I got Django to translate for me, and I put my arm round him and said: ‘Come and have a cup of tea.’ Maybe he was so gone that he didn’t know the score or he thought he’d already lost. So we went and had a cuppa and I said: ‘Your mum’s watching, your dad’s watching, this is bollocks, one more frame and it’s over.’ He was sobbing. I took him into my dressing room and Django was with us. I said to Django: ‘Tell him he’s got to go back and play, everything’s sweet’, and I asked him if he liked racing cars, Ferraris, and said we could go down to Brand’s Hatch for a day.

  He started to chill out. His manager, Gary Baldry, was there, and I said: ‘He’s got to go out and play.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Gary said.

  ‘Come on, let’s go out and do one more frame, get it over and done with, and that’s it, otherwise World Snooker and the press will slaughter him just like they slaughtered me and that’s no good for him.’

  So we went out, played the last frame and one person in the crowd slagged me off. He shouted out: ‘You’re just as bad, walking out.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got nothing nice to say, go home.’ That was while I was clearing up in the last frame. I thought, I’m not having this idiot saying that.

  So even though the walking-out experience was bad for me, in a way it made me aware of things, and enabled me to help Ding in the end, when he was in the same situation.

  I’ve never spoken to Ding about what happened. There’s no need to. He learnt from it, just as I learnt from my proper walkout.

  The wet towel over the head

  I was playing Mark King. Some players you can watch and enjoy and think: ‘You know what, I’m getting a pasting here, but I’ve got the best seat in the house’ – Stephen Hendry, John Higgins, and you’re going you know that this geeza’s class, but then I’m playing Mark King and there’s nothing good about watching him play.

  He probably knows he’s a hacker. He’s not one of those who thinks he’s brilliant. He’s honest and open. He knows he’s done unbelievably well for the talent he’s got. He’s a bit of a banger. He’s got no touch. But he
’s got more fight and spirit in him than anyone in the game. Having said that, sitting there and watching him play isn’t a dream day out.

  Everything he does is wrong; the way he stands, the way he holds his bridge hand, the way he flicks it in, there’s nothing smooth about the way he plays. So, no disrespect to Mark – okay, a bit of disrespect to Mark – I had to put the wet towel over my head so that I didn’t see it. And I was afraid I’d be able to see him through the towel. So as I put it over my head I thought, Christ, can I still see him? But I couldn’t, thankfully.

  I could just hear balls going in, and by the time the referee had called out the ball and he’d got round to potting his next ball I thought he must have walked round the table twice. A good player around this area when he’s in the balls just goes bish bish bish bish, done. Mark probably does four times more walking round the table than I do.

  I just found it very difficult to watch – it was a long match, best of 17 frames, the UK Championships, and I thought, I can’t watch him. But he isn’t the only one. There are loads I can’t bear watching. In some ways that’s why I wish I was shit because then I wouldn’t notice all the faults. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so aware of what makes certain players good and certain players bad. When you play a bad player you can pick up on their bad habits, just as when you play someone good you think: ‘Oh, I’ll try that’, and you can learn from them. With Mark King there was nothing I could feed off. I don’t think he ever knew why I had the towel over my head. He will do now, mind.

  He beat me 9-8. That was the match Ray Reardon walked out of because I was smacking the balls all over the show. They brought in a rule after that saying you weren’t allowed to put a towel over your head because it was ungentlemanly conduct.

  It was similar to when I played Selby and I started counting the dots on the spoon. I knew I wasn’t allowed to put the towel over my head, but he’s the same type of player. He’s got so many things wrong with his cue action that when you watch him you think, how is he potting balls, he’s going to break down eventually, he’s mistimed this one, miscued that, and I’d find myself watching and criticising in my mind. And it’s not something I wanted to do. I couldn’t help it. It’s like a compulsion. So my idea of counting the dots was so that I didn’t have to look at him or watch him play because he’s not good on the eye.

  I think I could be a good coach, but I’d be a bit like Ray Reardon – baffled and frustrated when players didn’t play the way I wanted them to play. People call me instinctive but I don’t think that’s right. I think it’s more the other way round. You have to be technically good before you can be truly instinctive. If you’re technically good you can play the shots with ease and precision, which then allows you to not worry about potting the ball and where the white goes; you’re just worried about getting from one shot to the next. You’re thinking, where do I want to be, rather than, I don’t like this shot; I’m jabby with this one, or I’m here but I don’t fancy getting there.

  Being technically good frees you up and enables you to concentrate on the game itself rather than struggling with shots. That’s why I’ve often said I thought Selby would struggle with the tournaments that were over longer frames because, like me, he’s had his technical problems. Interestingly, he’s never won the World Championship, and only won the UK this year when they shortened the matches to first to 11 frames instead of first to 19. In the longer matches, technique tends to come to the fore because you’re more likely to struggle at some point if the match is over a few sessions, and if you lose a session 6-2 or 7-1 you’ve really got to battle to get back in. I used to think I would never win the World Championship because I felt I was struggling with my game technically. Thankfully, I was wrong.

  The famous nosh in China

  I’m not sure if this counts as a moment of madness. I thought I was just having a laugh, though not everyone saw it that way. The problem was I didn’t realise the cameras were rolling and the mics were all set up. If I had, there is no way I would have said what I did.

  I was sitting next to Ivan Hirschowitz, head of media for World Snooker. Ivan’s one of my mates and he’s got a good sense of humour. They asked me the first question then translated it into English, and I thought, blimey that sounded a long question in Chinese then really short in English.

  ‘Fuck me,’ I said to Ivan. ‘That was the world’s longest question.’ And he started laughing.

  The journalist said: ‘D’you think you gave 100 per cent today?’

  ‘I thought I performed well, but Marco just performed better,’ I said. I had the microphone in my hand and then put it down. I whispered to Ivan: ‘Look at that, it’s the size of my prick and the same shape.’

  ‘Well, that’s a funny shape,’ Ivan said.

  ‘Well, what shape’s yours then, Ivan,’ I said.

  I didn’t realise I was all mic’d up, and we were just having a giggle. Then I looked round and said: ‘Anybody want to give me a nosh? Anyone want to suck my dick?’ And I was looking at the lady in the front row, saying: ‘You want to come and have a suck on this?’ She was looking at me, smiling, and Ivan was pissing himself laughing, tears rolling down his face. I only said it because she didn’t understand. It was stupid, but I’m not rude and offensive normally. We were just having a laugh.

  I only realised that the mic was on when I got home and Dad phoned me up and said: ‘You’ve been done for lewd comments; it’s all over the radio.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  I didn’t know what he was on about. I was staying at my mate’s house in Ongar, and had no internet connection so I just had to take Dad’s word for it. The first I saw of it was when I bought the Sun the next day. I’d got home on the Monday and the transcript of it appeared in the Sun on the Wednesday. When I read it I just started laughing. That’s fantastic, I thought, really funny. But at the same time I was worried because I knew World Snooker was looking for an excuse to come down on me and I think they assumed the Chinese would find it offensive and say that I was a rotten lot. I was convinced World Snooker were looking for the first opportunity to ban me, and thought this would be the perfect chance – Ronnie goes out to the new superpower, asks them to suck on his cock and upsets the Chinese. I thought they’d say, we need to come down on him; he’s not bigger than the sport, and I started to shit myself.

  I had a few friends in China and asked them if they could do some digging to find out what the vibe was over there; to see whether they were really appalled by what I’d done. They got back to me and said: ‘No, no, no, they don’t get it, they think you’re great, and they’re just gutted that you’ve gone home.’ My friend said: ‘They love you here, and they don’t understand what all the fuss is about.’

  So I thought, thank God for that. We put an apology out on their sports channel, I apologised, said, I love the Chinese snooker fans, I’m really looking forward to coming back. This was done without World Snooker, off my own back. By then the Chinese Snooker Association and Chinese press were on my side, so I had nothing to worry about from them. I just needed World Snooker to know that I had made up with the Chinese and apologised, and I knew that no damage had been done.

  Sometimes it feels as if I’m in an abusive relationship with World Snooker. They love me, and know that I’m good for the game. But at the same time they resent me – they think I think I’m above the sport. To an extent they have been dependent on me over the past few years, and they hate that. And I know I’ve never been one of their sheep; never just done what I’m told and fallen into line. If I did that I’d quickly lose my own sense of who I am.

  I thought, what’s the worst thing World Snooker can do to me? Ban me. And if they did, and I convinced myself I wasn’t enjoying playing, was depressed, they would have been doing me a favour. So every time I felt World Snooker had me by the short and curlies, I’d try to turn it into a positive – I told myself that being banned would be good for me, and put myself out of my misery. No more snooker depression: grea
t. I decided not to compromise. They could ban me if they wanted, but they’d look as if they were cutting off their nose to spite their face – ‘Good luck to you when you go and talk to sponsors because you would have been the ones who made the decision to ban me in the first place. I don’t have to worry about that now. Happy days!’ That’s what I told myself – and more or less what I told them.

  It is weird that they are so dependent on me after all these years; that no one has come along with the personality and talent to kick me into touch. I think it’s the personality thing that’s the biggest factor. Snooker players are all boring bastards basically. Even those who are hugely gifted technically don’t have that thing that makes the public really care about them like they did about me or Jimmy White or Alex Higgins. I suppose our instability has always added to our appeal. We’re all pretty vulnerable types one way or another, and you never knew what was going to happen next when we were around.

  The public adored Jimmy and Alex. Jimmy was such an amazing entertainer – and also the fact that he lost all six of his world finals turned him into even more of a people’s champion. We were all desperate for him to take the crown. Perhaps it’s the Hurricane that I’m most similar to, both in touch and in our demons. But I think the public see an important difference – ‘Yes, he’s like Higgins, but there’s the other side where he’s relentless in how he wants to be a champion, and he’s got these demons, he’s fucked up, we don’t know what he’s going to do next, but he’s healthy, he’s fit, he’s an athlete.’

  World Snooker know the public feel like that about me, and it’s a problem for them. Sometimes I think there’s nothing more they’d like to do than get rid of me once and for all. With Higgins they could do it – he wasn’t potting any more, wasn’t winning, so it was easy to give him lengthy bans when he misbehaved. Of course, when he was winning, they tolerated much of the bad behaviour.