Does Snooker need Ronnie ?

Players come and players go and there is always someone else waiting to step into the departing stars shoes , but im not sure that's the case with Ronnie .
I'm a fan of his play , not all the rest that comes with it .........but i can honestly say that a major tournament without him in has less of an appeal to me then if he were in it .

Ronnie is undoubtably one of the most exciting players to have played the game but the game will survive without him. There are some very good and entertaining players out there.

If he quits playing, he seems like the type of character who might get into financial trouble without a regular income. So come-backs will probably be the order of the day.

Ronnie will always be popular on the exhibition circuit so he will make money , but will that be enough for him ? it just seems to me like a tug of war between him and Barry Hearn about how many tournaments Ronnie plays in ....they should just sort it out imo and make the fans happy

The thing is Kenny, all the players have to abide by the same rules. Ronnie is not bigger than the game and Mr Hearn cannot ammend any rules to suit him and him alone.

I agree billy , but i dont think the current schedule is the right way to go anyway . Some players wont want to travel all over the world all the time

Its a very packed schedual thats for sure. Ronnie is bang on about that and it should be looked at.
Until there is a change in that, Ronnie will either have to conform or continue to drop ranking points and eventually be forced to qualify for major tournements.

Do you think other players will follow Ronnie in pulling out of more tournaments billy ?

Maybe some of the older players but certainly not the younger generation that are hungry to prove themselves.

I was setting the world to rights down the pub the other day and one of my mates was saying he can see a breakaway from Mr Hearn coming if things aren't changed with the schedule .............what do you think ? i cant see it getting to that point personally

I cant see a break away coming myself but the current system needs to be reviewed.

I think it was Stephen Hendry who put down the reason for retiring was the new schedules. I do think the situation needs looking at with perhaps making the major tournaments and perhaps (any two) overseas tournaments as compulsory.

I think that could work CC

No, snooker doesn't "need" Ronnie, at all. He will be missed, of course, if he does pack it in now. So will Hendry, however. So was Alex Higgins.

To be honest, when I hear fanciful claims such as "the game can't survive without Ronnie" or "I won't be watching a tournament if he's not in it" being throw about, I begin to question if those people saying them are actually proper fans of the sport, or if they are just in fact Ronnie fanatics whose knowledge of the game outside of Mr O'Sullivan could fit on the back of a stamp. Ronnie's the biggest name in the game, but he most certainly isn't bigger than it.

With what Ding has done, the game is huge in China, a country from which many new stars will surely emerge (and not just stars in the confines of the British Isles, either). On the home front, Trump is as exciting a player to have emerged in two decades and will be wowing the crowds for years to come. These stars will also begin to wane in fifteen years or so, such is life. And likewise, they'll be replaced by a new crop who will fill the gap more than adequately.

With regards to Hearn, he's the best thing to happen to the running and growth of snooker since the BBC picked the sport up decades and decades ago. Do we want the terrible old days of Sir Rodney Walker back? About five or six ranking tournaments per season, none of those outside of the UK, some without a legimite sponsor and, on top of that, only half the players and less than half the prize money we currently have?

I'd much rather have the game growing the world over instead of shrinking within the UK, as it was. For years, the players moaned that there weren't enough tournaments and a lack of money; now they have these in abundance, and they continue to whinge. Madness. Snooker has come on leaps and bounds in the past three years.

Anyway, after years of pretty much the same under Walker, it was always likely that the first two or three years of Hearn's reign would see a few teething problems. I'm sure a balance will be struck, perhaps like in tennis, whereby a player is mandated to enter so many of the scheduled tournaments unless there is a genuine reason they can't, while they can sort their schedule around the rest, picking and choosing.

88Chris05. There are many people out there that only watch Ronnie and i am in full agreeance with you when i doubt their enjoyment of the sport. I would hazard a guess that alot of those people were simply watching to see if Ronnie had a meltdown.

No Rodney Walker days again please

No player is bigger than the game...

Let the spoilt little boy jog on...