Ronnie O’Sullivan is unconcerned by criticism aimed at him by Shaun Murphy, saying he is not interested and doesn’t care what anyone has to say about him.
Murphy spoke out at the UK Championship against O’Sullivan’s attitude and the lack of interest from other players on growing snooker and improving the sport.
The Magician says he finds the Rocket’s comments on not caring about snooker ‘frustrating’ while it is also ‘irritating’ that the world champion does not use his platform to talk up the sport enough.
When the comments were put to the world number one, he was largely unmoved, happy to stick to playing the game to the highest level and not get dragged into arguments.
‘I am not interested in what anyone has got to say about me,’ O’Sullivan told BBC Radio 5 Live.
He added: ‘If people want to come and choose to watch me play then great, and if they choose not to watch me, that’s also great. It’s better they come and watch you than not.
‘I am just doing my own business, and I don’t care what they say about the game. I just don’t care and I cut off for a long time.
‘I love what I am doing, I enjoy where I am and that’s it. It’s better to be like that. I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry, I’m lost for words.’
Murphy spoke out after beating Dave Gilbert in the last 32 at the UK Championship, saying that the game means everything to him and finds it hard to listen to when O’Sullivan, and others, suggest that snooker is not important to them.
‘It is very frustrating, but he’s not on his own as a player that talks about how little the game means to them, and it’s just one of the things they do with their life and they have got other things and other interests, the game means so little to them,’ the Magician said.
‘For a few that is even true, but for players like myself…I don’t have the CV of O’Sullivan, I don’t have what I assume must be an incredible amount of wealth. He comes from an incredibly wealthy background and grew up in incredible wealth. Most of the tour don’t come from that world.
‘It’s okay for him and people like him, that have cabinet after cabinet of trophies, to say how little the game means to them, but for the rest of us it means an awful lot because it not only feeds our life and looks after us today.
‘But I am only 40 and I remember the village I grew up in and I know the life I would have had but for this game that saved me from a life of complete anonymity and I will never ever forget that.’
MORE : Shaun Murphy slams Ronnie O’Sullivan’s attitude and ‘disgusting apathy’ of other players
MORE : ‘I don’t think anyone has it’ – Ronnie O’Sullivan’s brutal assessment of the snooker tour
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