Ronnie O’Sullivan baffled as he fails to feel the love from snooker bosses

The Rocket claimed an eighth UK Championship on Sunday night by beating Ding Junhui 10-7, extending his own record tally in the tournament and cementing his place as world number one just a couple of days before his 48th birthday.

All is going well for O’Sullivan on the table, but as so often has been the case over his immense career, he is not in harmony with those who run the game.

The seven-time world champion faced a disciplinary process for comments he made on the ‘Macau Five’ situation, which saw players facing sanctions for playing in a big-money exhibition instead of the Northern Ireland Open.

As part of the disciplinary process, the Rocket says he received a letter which has left him confused and feeling that he is being pushed out of the sport.

‘As long as they want me to keep playing I’ll play,’ said O’Sullivan. ‘But they sent me a letter the other week saying they want me to consider my future on the tour. I don’t know what’s going through their heads at the moment.

‘From my perspective, I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job but they don’t seem to think so, they seem to want me to hand my resignation in.’

WST say there has been a misunderstanding over the letter to O’Sullivan, explaining: ‘We wrote to Ronnie hoping to discuss his future plans and ambitions in the sport.

‘We want to work together to continue to grow the game which we have done so successfully to date, we would love Ronnie to carry on playing for as long as possible.’

WST’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Tom Rowell spoke to the BBC during the UK Championship, reiterating how important O’Sullivan is to the sport and hoping for dialogue with players.

Another letter was sent to players in York inviting them to a meeting to discuss recent disagreements and the terms of the players’ contract, although only Mark Allen chose to attend.

‘We love Ronnie. Ronnie is fantastic for the sport, for most people on the street Ronnie O’Sullivan is snooker’ Rowell told the BBC. ‘In terms of that letter, it was an open invitation, we never stipulate a player has to come and meet us. With Mark Allen, the invitation was there and he took the invitation up.’

Allen was left irritated by the lack of interest from his fellow players in trying to resolve issues with World Snooker Tour, saying it was a positive meeting with the board.

‘There’s not enough other players willing to have those type of meetings, that’s very, very frustrating,’ said the Pistol. ‘There’s so many players behind the scenes saying what they don’t like in the game, what they would love to see changed

‘There was only me that actually wanted to have a meeting. It was a four-and-a-half hour meeting, so we had lots of time to get through everything and I appreciate everyone’s time from WST who came because there was like seven of them there.

‘It was a very open and candid chat and I went away from it, overall, positive with how it went. Disappointed with some of the responses I got, but it gave me more of an understanding why they view things a certain way and why they have to have certain things in the contract.’

Exhibitions are going ahead in Macau over Christmas, when some players will get to earn a lot of cash while tour events are not being played.

Shaun Murphy, who turned down an approach to play in Macau, said: ‘I can only speak from my personal experience, I was offered the same amount of money to go to that event in the Far East as I would have had for getting to the final of the Northern Ireland Open.’

O’Sullivan will be playing alongside Judd Trump, Ding Junhui, Jack Lisowski, Mark Williams, Kyren Wilson, Marco Fu and Si Jiahui and is looking forward to it.

‘Its a stellar line-up,’ he said. ‘I get paid so much more for going to do that. It’s really hard for me to turn them down, I can’t. I’ve got to think of my family and all that sort of stuff.

‘It’s all right if you win all of these tournaments, great. But if you get beat first round you’re struggling to pay your bills and stuff.

‘It’s hard. I’m trying to find the balance between competing and playing and trying to take the good offers that are out there for me to do my own sort of thing.’

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