Following his second round triumph over Ding, Ronnie O’Sullivan took to the microphone in his post-match interview with Rob Walker to voice his honest assessment of the current standard of play. O’Sullivan stated his opinions on younger players and those lower in the rankings which received an uproar of a response on social media as he trended for some time afterwards. But is there any truth to what he said?

For those who didn’t catch the interview or are reading at a future date, O’Sullivan made the audacious, and perhaps excessive, statement involving sentiments such as ‘they’re not that good’ and ‘they would make half decent amateurs’. This was concluded by the jest of him saying that he would probably need to ‘lose an arm and a leg’ to fall out of the top 50. While he expressed a harsh reality, I think there may be a little misinterpretation (believe it or not) in how many understood his words as debates were sent flying regarding various establishment issues.

Here’s what I think O’Sullivan was trying to put across. I think his main point was that there aren’t any young prodigies that are comparable to what he, Higgins, Williams and Hendry introduced to snooker. By the time they were 25, they had all achieved each of the Triple Crown titles, whilst having to compete against each other. Following this Class of ’92, no one has come close to replicating these feats*. Players of this current generation tend to peak a little later on in their careers, during their late 20s/30s and hardly any of them introduced a game-changer similar to the aforementioned above.

A further underlying point I think O’Sullivan was trying to clarify was that he perhaps expected the likes of himself and Williams/Higgins to be forced out of the game by this point of their careers. And the fact that they are still playing to this level with the ranking positions they hold show that the standard isn’t as good as it should be. But I think this is more to do with how well they are competing in what is considered the most competitive era.

The natural evolution of sport is that athletes tend to improve over time and I think being able to perform highly whilst they age is part of that, which is what we’re seeing from the Class of ’92 (among others) and I expect many of the current top breed of players to do the same. Let’s not forget that in the pre-Crucible days, the average age of a snooker player was quite high in comparison to today.

The aftermath of O’Sullivan’s interview ignited a number of discussions pertaining to things such as the flat-128 draw, ranking system, tour cards and amateur scene. Things that are outside of O’Sullivan’s direct control. Now, was what he said harsh? Yes. But why are people acting so surprised? This is the same person that referred to everyone as ‘numpties’ before this. It’s all a part of his persona and character, something that still severely lacks in snooker today. He was definitely just having a bit of fun, as he stated in that very interview about his ability to easily switch off away from the table.

If anyone has the accolades to support saying statements like this, you would think it’s O’Sullivan. It doesn’t make it right, but it’s not even about that. The problems that were being talked about following this interview all related to the running of the snooker tour. And I reckon those at the helm would have loved seeing Ronnie O’Sullivan trending on Twitter along with the numerous headlines that came along with this expression of thought.

*There will be a future Throwback Short post looking at the successes of the Class of ’92 during the 1990s. Stay tuned!

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