2.4.09

RONNIE'S INTERVIEW

I don't think there's much doubt that Ronnie O'Sullivan has a low boredom threshold.

There's also little doubt that interviews by the Chinese media are long winded affairs, with the questions and answers translated back and forth.

Add in the fact that Ronnie hadn't slept at all last night and you get...this.

33 comments:

Anon said...

I wonder why he didn't get any sleep...

Anonymous said...

Rude and disrespectful as always. We all have to do things we don't like sometimes. He's happy to take the money but doesn't want to give anything back. He has a responsibility and needs to grow up. Frankly my boredom threshold with this man is at an all time low.

Matt said...

Hah you beat me to it, didn't realise you had posted it.

It's an improvement on last year I suppose.

Anonymous said...

Anon 8:07 ffs if you hate the guy this much turn your tv off when he's on. As Dave said he didn't get any sleep the night before he did look genuinely done in, and may i suggest it's you who need's to grow up. FFS ronnies done this ronnies that.

Anonymous said...

An you really deserve little respect with childish comment's like that anon:8:33

Anonymous said...

please turn moderation back on Dave until people learn how to be civil. It is not pleasant having to read comments like this.

Anonymous said...

Not the best behaviour but nothing major by O'Sullivan's standard.
Anon 8:33 wise up

Monique said...

I really don't see what's the big deal with this. Here is a guy we all know isn't the most educated in the lot - we know his background, don't we? - and shattered with jet-lag. He isn't the only one: Ali said the same yesterday. It's not something you control and everyone traveling long distances regularly would know. He didn't say anything disrespectfull or offensive, he refused to take any position of the other players chances wich was wise and he chosed to laugh about the alledged Higgins sentences... the friendly rivalry between the two has been there for years. ;)
So where's the problem exactly? I have heard things that were much much worse ... and in the mouth of highly respected mutiple world champions.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Ronnie should watch how other top professionals in other sports conduct themselves ie Nadal ,Federer, Tiger Woods. Snooker could be in better shape if he took a leaf out of their books.

Anonymous said...

to be fair to Ronnie, what had a couple of those questions got to do with him or his career?
He came over as patient and relaxed- and I say this as someone who doesnt like his attitude a lot of the time.

Dave H said...

I have a certain sympathy with Ronnie. The questions he is being asked are tiresome, particularly when you've not slept.

He's not the best ambassador for snooker in pure terms, but the sort of person he is - honest to the point of putting himself in trouble - is what makes him such a fascinating character.

Would anyone honestly change him?

Matt said...

I'm not his greatest fan by any means and I don't think that his body language/demeanour is great in this interview, but let's face it he and others have done far worse. In any case there are some good reasons to explain it to a degree as have been described already.

On a purely personal basis I would change him to be honest, my sporting heroes tend to be those like Hendry, Rafael Nadal, Paul Scholes...the quiet, model professionals.

But ultimately I appreciate that many sports fans are drawn to the more controversial types and so snooker needs him as a result. In any case I guess it's important to have a mix of characters, if all of the players were perfect all of the time then things would get pretty boring, pretty quickly.

Anonymous said...

Jeepers, so much is made of British snooker players sustaining jet-lag yet it seems we dont hear an awful lot about this ailment in other sports ie Federer, Nadal, Woods etc.
This is no excuse for the spoilt Brit players and is not something you hear from the likes of Robertson, Ding and Wenbo bleating on about in Beiljing either.
They are used to travelling to play their chosen sport.
The demise of snooker will in part be due to the attitude of the players.

Anonymous said...

I agree that jetlag is no excuse. Any similar footage of any other snooker player? I think not. Is he the only one to suffer jetlag? He's always got an excuse but I'm tired of hearing them.

Anonymous said...

Dave H said...
I have a certain sympathy with Ronnie. The questions he is being asked are tiresome, particularly when you've not slept.

He's not the best ambassador for snooker in pure terms, but the sort of person he is - honest to the point of putting himself in trouble - is what makes him such a fascinating character.

Would anyone honestly change him?
----

yes, totally.

he is a great player but act like a complete idiot most of the time and its only people who love him and his waywardness that think his behaviour is ok, but in other walks of life those same people would mostly be saying hes out of order.

gets the headlines though, but most of us are bored with it...and his fans are bored with us complaining about it.

WS hardly ever punish him to any effect when they bother to at all, so its a no win situation no matter if you love or "hate" him.

id enjoy snooker more if he wasnt playing

Anonymous said...

Changing the subject for a minute, what reason did John Parrott give for his withdrawal from this event?
Its just that he looked mighty fine while co-presenting the BBC racing coverage on telly today.
If it wasn't him it certainly looked (and sounded) like JP.

Anonymous said...

http://snookerscene.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

answer a few down on that page

CRO Snoox said...

Oh come on you guys... we all now what Ron is like!? This time he was tired as hell, and i understand that, and he is always childish and everything but that's what makes him different from all other players, and i personally love that about him and you gotta understand, he meant nothing bad or rude with his behaviour, that's the way he is, childishly honest :)

sorry about my english! Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Czech Republic 1 Slovakia 2

This scoreline went unnoticed last night in the euphoria regarding England's 2-1 win at Wembley.
Personally I am sick of people putting down England suggesting they have beaten nobody yet the team they destroyed 4-0 (apparent no hopers) then won away at the supposedly technical wizards of Czech.
I would think the same England knockers are responsible for the derogatory remarks regarding Ronnie O'Sullivan who some saw wouldn't have beaten Jim Meadowcroft in the good old days.

Ruthie said...

Aside from maybe covering his mouth when he yawned, I don't see much wrong with this. Ronnie was being asked to forecast things in Sheffield when he should have just been talking about the match he had won: players can be requested for feature interviews to talk about wider topics, after all. China is generally not so sensitive when it comes to public behaviour, but I'm not sure what the etiquette is on yawning and would be interested to know. I think thanking the journalists in Chinese was a nice touch. All the way through the clip I was waiting for something truly awful and it didn't happen. How would we compare this to, say, the occasional one-word Hendry press conference, or the presser where a player talks in circles on barely related matter (an evening of Peter Ebdon comparing himself to Carly Simon springs to mind)? I'm not generally lenient on Ronnie but I think he did okay here.

Anonymous said...

Well, at least he did better than last year

Anonymous said...

he wasnt even trying not to yawn.

no matter how you look at it it is plain rude and ignorant.

tiredness, or "hes always like that" are not excuses.

he should "always" be like that.

hes an ignorant man. if that floats your boat because its different then that says more about you as a person than it does him. each to their own.

i just find him more rude than any other sportsperson and no matter how good he is at snooker it always detrats from his ability for me.

Anonymous said...

Does it really matter if you like him or not? Is it essential that sportsmen have to be likeable? I dont think so. I think he is greedy and manipulative and someone I wouldnt have a drink with but it doesnt matter - he is a snooker player first and foremost. Anyone who expects him also to be a pious role model is asking the wrong thing of him. All he is interested in, and rightly so, is earning money through his job - being a nice person need not form part of the spec

Anonymous said...

i never said it did.

what i do find is that his "hardcore" fans cant just say the truth without being biased.

he is downright rude. that is plain to see for all, no matter what your upbringing is/was like.

Anonymous said...

Talented player he is.

Anonymous said...

yes he is. nobody who nows a little about snooker could deny he is a fantastic player.

what he does off the table is still uncalled for and its no wonder a lot of people, even those who use to find it amusing, are now calling it boring / staged / uncalled for.

Very few of his fans say these things though. They usually delfect about all the negative things and see but he is great at snooker, and suchlike.

Anonymous said...

Ok...I'm a very big fan of Ronnie and I'm very proud and happy that Ronnie was a stoner who smoked weed every day and got drunk all day long and still managed to be the greatest and most popular of all time, not by the the titles but all around... and all his sins are making him a lot more bigger legend!!! Go On Ron!!! and it doesn't matter cause maybe Hendry is going to held more records or whatever, but the greatest snooker player of all time is Ronnie O'Sullivan, and that's a fact! and still... he has achieved that status with weed and alcohol issues... the legend... the man... the genius!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

at least ron's never been served with a writ whilst playing!

Anonymous said...

4:01 is obviously an idiot looking to wind people up.

6:30 you are correct i believe. what that has got to do with Rons long long long track record i dont know. enlighten us that that one incident surpasses all Rons "faults"?

Black_cat from TSF said...

I don't like Ronnie not covering his mouth when he yawns because my mum taught me differently when I was 7. But apart from that, I have no idea why some of the reactions here are so vehement. The man yawned open-mouthed, closed his eyes and slept for a few seconds, waited patiently for the translator to finish her giggling and had the courtesy to say "Thank you" in Chinese at the end.
So what's the big deal?
I can't help thinking that some people are a tad disappointed he hasn't done anything outrageous in China this year *evil grin* and he won't either, given that he's coming home a bit earlier. After all, last year's feat managed to set quite an unattainable "standard", I'd say. (Was appalled then, I still don't think it was on at the moment.)

I don't follow tennis because I find it boring and it always interferes with snooker on Eurosport but I can't believe that tennis players have never yawned, scratched their this and that and said midly stupid things while being interviewed. I really can't. Plus the tennis circuit is a lot more crowded than the snooker one so you'd expect top players to be a bit more accustomed to it, whereas snooker players only travel twice a season along quite a few time zones.

Anonymous said...

i dont think he did much wrong at all "samantha", but he certainly was rude IMHO. Tired or not, manners cost nothing and he showed very little. The thank you didnt make up for the gaping yawns and closing eyes for about 10 seconds during an interview.

Everyone else has the decency to act decent 99% of the time. He seems to act bizarrely at least half the time. Some love it, some cant stand it. Thats life. I cant stand it.

Black_cat from TSF said...

I dislike bad manners as well, Anon 8:00. Fiercely so.
What irks me to no end is the perpetual "He has got so much from snooker and hasn't given back" cliche. Or the "He needs to grow up" one. Or comparisons with tennis players. (I merely paraphrased some of the replies on this topic, not yours.) And these cliches show up each time, after each blunder, whether deservedly ( like last year in China) or not.
And this...is what annoys me immensely. That each time Ronnie does something ranging from the "a bit inappropriate" to the "outrageous", same cliches are noticeable.
But it's too long and winded a story so I'll leave it to that.

Allow me to repeat: I hate bad manners, dislike cavity-picking in public, am not too fond of yawning open-mouthed and would completely disregard any man wearing white socks and dress trousers (unless he's Terry Jones:D ) but to go from that to the cliches above-mentioned is just exaggerated.

Anonymous said...

it is exagerated. i agree, but then

only "bad people" get caught doing "bad things" and so thered be nothing to exagerate on if "players" were well behaved.

no, not act like obedient schoolchildren, but at least with manners and dignity, most of the time

x