The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Why the establishment fears Ronnie O’Sullivan
They are the interviews that send us to sleep, the post-match press conferences in which sports people display the skills they have learnt in media training. The skill is to say nothing, to utter little but hardworn clichés, to pay the lip service of complimenting the hard work of the opposing team, to escape the whole experience and not have to face a dressing down from their manager/ agent/family/other-half because they made some embarrassing gaffe. All they and their team want is a good and fair report on the actual result, no deflections with dropped clangers or Twitter rows, and then the focus can simply be on the next game.
But how frustrating this must be for the sports journalists aching for colour – and how dull it is for us. Which is one of the reasons Ronnie O’Sullivan’s post-match interview style is such a tonic. The comments he made in the wake of his recent victory at the Masters last weekend continue to reverberate. This was his eighth Masters title.
And rather than flatter the effort or skill of his opponent, Ali Carter, he went into full assault mode. “He’s got issues, mate. I’m telling you. He’s got to go and sort his life out. He’s got to go and see a counsellor,” he said. “I don’t talk to him. I haven’t spoken to him for 20 years.” Then, with the microphones of the BBC and others in front of him and the logos of the sponsors on a screen behind, he lifted his middle finger and added: “He can sit on it as far as I’m concerned.”
This followed an interview he made on the BBC after his semi-final victory against Shaun Murphy in which he said of the younger players: “Their brains are quite slow. They need to get their act together, because I’m going blind, I’ve got a dodgy arm and bad knees and they still can’t beat me.”
In an interview for Eurosport after his triumph at the UK Championship in December, when asked how he would celebrate his victory, O’Sullivan replied: “Just a couple of Snickers bars, a bag of crisps and a Diet Coke in the car on the motorway on the way home.”
His tone of voice is always understated; there is no bombast, and like the greatest heroes of fiction, he walks off into the sunset in a blaze of quite extraordinary, self-deprecating modesty. It’s mesmerising and we hang on his every word. He has a rare talent, of course. He is fascinating to watch as he manoeuvres around the table, like a predator after their prey. Of course, he can think several shots in advance, and can play right- or lefthanded, but he also has courage to go for the pot where others might play a safety shot. He can position a cue ball as if he has guided it to the spot himself with an invisible hand. And there is his speed, often in match-play taking no more than 12 seconds, on average, between shots.
So, when you combine this with his personality, you have something rare: populism. And populism at its best, because he is authentic. He hides nothing, which is perhaps because he wouldn’t know how, or indeed why, to hide. His victories seem to cause him a sort of sweet agony. They are never enough, he never feels he is good enough, and one hopes he can find peace, somehow. Although, following the Masters final, seeing him pose for photos at the snooker table with his son and daughter, where he suddenly seemed settled, indicated that it is with his family that he finds his soul can pause and be calm and content.
But populists worry people because they are out of control. I wonder if this is somehow the reason he has never won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. He doesn’t fit their agenda – he wouldn’t gush with the right appreciation and say the right things on stage (which is maybe the same reason Frankie Dettori, another gifted sporting – also white, middle-aged, male – genius, has never won Spoty).
Such people worry the establishment. They don’t need conduits to the public, or advisers; they have a canny ability to connect directly. They are dangerous. Like another natural, gifted populist that we all know: Donald Trump.
Trump has long displayed that knack of saying things that gain our attention. Journalists cannot help themselves in reporting his every, usually stupid, utterance. And Left-wing journalists are even worse, printing, dissecting, discussing his abhorrent catastrophes of speech – like some irresistible fetish – that they would do far better ignoring.
Most politicians spend years trying to be authentic, to be polished versions of their true selves, offering up, for example, an advised set of musical choices on (Gordon Brown), or attempting to connect with the electorate and become leader of the Tory party by claiming they had modest social origins (Douglas Hurd). But they soon realise they can’t do authenticity, especially when they try harder to do it. Only a chosen few can walk into a room and capture the eyes and ears of everyone. When O’Sullivan does it, it’s wonderful.