Ronnie is in New York, filming a pool documentary … and taking and sharing some pictures. He clearly loves the place.
The name ronnieo147 was already taken and that account is a fake.
I already warned people countless times before about this account being fake, in vain. Now Ronnie has asked on his facebook to raise awareness and share the info.
Ronnie is in America, with his partner, Laila Rouass and his close friend, pool player Raj Hundal. Ronnie and Raj go a long way back: they both played on the pool circuit in the US, in 2005/2006, when Ronnie decided to give pool a go …
Some of us will remember this epic piece of news
Rocket in a stew
Nov 20 2005
Peter Shuttleworth, Wales on Sunday
RONNIE O’Sullivan’s recipe for snooker success is simple – just add carrots.
Arguably the most naturally gifted player of all time, Ronnie insists he has no intention of ditching the game he loves – despite suggestions to the contrary.
He wants to be remembered as the finest ever player to grace the green baize, but in order for the mercurial world No 1 to pacify his tortured soul, change could be as good as a rest.
So in order to get his potting passion bubbling again, ‘The Rocket’ is prepared to make a splash on the eight-ball pool circuit across the pond in the US. As a philosophical O’Sullivan puts it: “Sometimes if you just eat potatoes you become sick of potatoes.
“You can boil them, make chips or have a jacket potato but after a while you want something a little different. “Maybe you want to put a few carrots in the pot, some celery or a swede and add a bit of salt and pepper and it becomes a nice bit of stew. And I like stew.
“So snooker is my potato and pool is my carrots.
“It’s like anything. It’s nice to have a few things boiling in the pot, it gives it a bit more flavour and a bit more spice and variety.
“I like to enrich myself by having a variety of things on the boil otherwise things become too predictable.”
Move aside Plato, or should that be Gordon Ramsay!
O’Sullivan adds: “Pool is something new for me and it’s kind of a trial period.
“I’m not taking Pool too seriously but I want to play in a competition now to suss out the opposition and see how much I’d have to improve.
“It’s all about getting the blend right.
“People automatically assume the transition from snooker to pool is easy because the pockets are bigger but that’s nonsense.
“It’s tougher than it looks and if you’ve any aspirations of doing well then dedication, effort and time is needed because the game deserves respect.”
Snooker is still gripped by the collective fear that the game is close to losing its great entertainer, its flawed genius, its iconic figure in the wake of O’Sullivan admitting his ‘disillusionment’ with the sport.
But the two-time World Champion admits a string of perplexing public utterances, including ‘I can’t take much more of this’ and ‘I probably won’t play next year’, are often made in the ‘heat of battle’ and should be taken with a pinch of his favourite condiment.
“Getting p***ed off is part and parcel of sport,” he explains, with perhaps a little less eloquence.
“It’s all about riding the wave and being patient.
“A team sport is easier when you’re unhappy because you can hide but in individual sports, sportsmen’s vulnerabilities are all the more striking. And I’m just a human being who is not always as cool and relaxed as people think.
“Sometimes people hold you to things you say when it is said in the heat of the moment,” said O’Sullivan.
“But everyone forgets the 50 positive things you say about the game.
“I want to win many more titles and I want to stay world No 1 for a long time – is that the wish of someone who is fed up with the game?
“The measure of a great player is how many titles you win. Stephen Hendry has won seven World Championships, 36 titles and has been in the top two in the world for more-or-less 15 years and that’s an amazing achievement.
“If I achieve half of what Hendry has I’ll be satisfied, and to remain in the top eight for the next ten years will be an achievement.
“I want to be classed as an all-time great when I eventually retire.
“Whether I’m one of the great snooker players of all-time is for other people to judge. If at the end of my career, some old pros debate the best players and I was in the top four or five I’d be happy.
“It depends whether judges put results ahead of style and entertainment. Sometimes it’s hard to be successful and entertaining. I’m a naturally attacking player so people like watching me play for entertainment value.
“I don’t want to change my style of play as I haven’t done bad thus far but what drives me now is to beat Hendry’s record so there’s no question about my all-time status.”
The Rocket has come of age in terms of tournament victories as his five major title victories last season – not including his fourth BetFred Premier League crown – ensures O’Sullivan hit 18 and is the third most successful player on tour behind Hendry and Steve Davis.
The Essex showman is the youngest player ever to win a ranking tournament, the 1993 UK Championship aged 17, while his two Crucible successes were in 2001 and 2003.
O’Sullivan has fired six maximum 147 breaks including the five fastest on record and is just as comfortable with the left hand as he is with the right. He’s got the lot. Double Welsh Open champion Ronnie is back in Wales this week for the last leg of the Premier League snooker event at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall, before next month’s play-offs. O’Sullivan has already qualified for the finals in Manchester but he wants to pour some more cash into the coffers.
“I’ll keep on my snooker journey as long I keep winning,” said O’Sullivan. “But the difficult thing is when I’ve stopped winning, I might still feel I’m capable of winning tournaments.
“When you’re used to winning, you always believe you can win titles. That’s why many sportsmen go beyond their best years as they win off memory, they still believe they are capable of winning a title.
“I suppose you could put Steve Davis in that column. He knows if he hits top form he can win a title, it’s just a case of being consistent.”
O’Sullivan may be planning his 30th birthday bash but he’s still a child at heart and loves being centre of attention, a fact endorsed by my first audience with him at this year’s Wales Open.
I spoke to O’Sullivan as he sat eating a ham sandwich, with mouth wide open, in the middle of the press room.
And there’s no indication that the habitual fidget, who hops up and down in his seat like an excited school kid, growing up. “Age is just a number,” he says.
“I know many 60-year-olds who act like teenagers and teenagers who act like 60-year-olds.
“I’ve a young soul and all I want to do is enjoy myself.”
O’Sullivan clearly follows his Welsh coach and mentor Ray Reardon as he said of the six-times World Champ: “He’s 73 going on 23! Ray’s not just a world-class player but he’s a worldly guy.
“Forget sports psychologists, I’d rather spend a bit of time with Ray. “He keeps it simple and that’s what most things are about. It’s like Gordon Ramsay having a chat with Jamie Oliver. They have food in common while Ray and I both love snooker.”
it may be more than 10 years old, it still makes me smile …
Anyway, Ronnie tweeted this today:
In New York now so lots of posts and tweets about what I’m doing here with my American pool trip
Whilst Laila and Raj posted these pictures
Ronnie had hinted at that trip in one of his Eurosport blogs with Desmond Kane.
So we’ll keep our eyes peeled.
Ronnie didn’t travel unprepared … he practised “One Pocket” pool with Raj before heading to America and apparently loved the experience, as he tweeted:
Playing some one pocket it’s a great game
This one pocket is the best game I’ve played in years. Think it would go down well with cue sport fans
à suivre …
I had heard about this a couple of months ago but now it’s out in the press …
Published July 6, 2016 by Katherine Cowdrey
Snooker genius Ronnie “The Rocket” O’Sullivan is publishing a “grittily authentic” crime novel with Orion.
O’Sullivan, 40, is a five-time world snooker champion and in May received an OBE at Buckingham Palace. He is also Eurosport’s global snooker ambassador.
His upcoming thriller, Framed, is set in the “dog-eat-dog underworld of 1980s Soho” and is about “a young man with a lot on his shoulders”, called Frankie James.
Said to draw on O’Sullivan’s own compelling life story, the book tells the tale of James, whose parent aren’t around after his mother disappeared when he was 15 and his father is in jail for armed robbery. James owes rent on a snooker club in Soho he’d inherited to one of London’s toughest gangsters. Worse, he swore to his mother that he’d look after his younger, “wilder” brother, Jack. So when Jack goes to prison after turning up at the club early one morning with blood on his hands, Frankie must do all he can to help his brother avoid conviction: he needs to find out who framed Jack and why. The task will mean “entering the sordid world of bent coppers, ruthless mobsters and twisted killers he’s tried all his life to avoid getting sucked into”.
O’Sullivan’s own parents both went to prison – his father was convicted of the murder of a driver of the Kray twins’ brother Charlie, for which he was given a life sentence, and his mother went away for tax evasion – leaving him to take care of his younger sister.
The book will be O’Sullivan’s first crime novel, after publishing his autobiography, Running, with Orion in 2014.
Framed is due to be published in hardback on 17th November, priced £16.99.
Now I’m curious …
Whilst your truly yours was hopping from plane to plane, and desperately trying to locate her lost luggage (that hasn’t be found yet …), some had a relaxing day in Romania!
Thanks to Jason Francis for sharing these
And Ronnie clearly enjoyed his Romanian time, as he tweeted
Life is great
Ronnie came back from Belfast with a defeat but also with memories to be cherished …
This is what he put on his Facebook page:
Met up with Jean and Anne yesterday, the Hurricanes sisters. They gave me two pieces of his chalk. Humbled
Ronnie was always a great admirer of Alex Higgins game and flair. He was one of his childhood heroes.
Yesterday Worldsnooker published this
Wednesday 30 Mar 2016
Bill Davis, father of six-time World Champion Steve, has died at the age of 89.
Bill played a huge part in his son’s career, as a corner man and coach, as Steve dominated snooker throughout the 1980s.
Steve conquered the Crucible six times between 1981 and 1989, spent seven years as world number one, and as recently as 2010 reached the quarter-finals of the World Championship.
Steve Davis himself paid his father this very short but very moving tribute:
He loved the game more than me
Anyone who did read Steve’s biography – Interesting – will know how important his father was for Steve Davis career, and how close they were.
My thoughts go to Steve and his family in those difficult times.
And, wherever you are, Bill, thank you for this incredible gift you offered to snooker, and to us fans, without you Steve would never have been that interesting …
Finally thanks to Jimmy White Fanatic on twitter who shared this marvelous image.
Ronnie is clearly enjoying his time in Berlin, and, for the first time since months really took on twitter (and Facebook) this morning .
So here we go…
He started with a question
Who’s agrees to trying thicker cloths to see if it gets rid of the dreaded kicks?
feel free to answer in comments, I’ll pass it on.
Next
Done 4 Mile run in Berlin, what a beauty city, also run pass part of the Berlin Wall
Followed by
Breakfast in Berlin
So much for those who in recent months used his name to promote vegetarian or vegan diet! He isn’t either and when I showed him one article on a blog claiming he was, his answer was “Me? Never!”. (Read “Mee? Nevah!”)
He also shared this video on twitter and Facebook
And concluded (for now) with this picture and quote…
Including myself …
Ronnie O'Sullivan 