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Ronnie O’Sullivan has played down the prospect of going into snooker coaching once he retires from the game, but refused to rule out the prospect entirely. His comments came moments before he crashed out of the English Open on Thursday in a 4-2 defeat to Zhang Anda.
It was his second match of the day after already defeating rising star Si Jiahui earlier in the previous session, after which he explained that he is “enjoying playing, I am battling and want to play and am giving it all I can” – despite rumours continuing to swirl around his possible retirement.
The Rocket has been open about his disdain for the British leg of the tour and how he would prefer to play in Asia, even recently calling for the World Snooker Championship to be moved away from the Crucible in a public spat with snooker’s chiefs.
Following his victory over Si, who has proven to be one of the sport’s most talented young players with his run to the semi-finals at the Crucible last year, O’Sullivan was asked whether he would consider coaching a player such as Si when he eventually retires from the sport. “If it was what I wanted to do, I would only work with someone that I thought could be the best player in the world and win the World Championship – and If I felt I could add something,” O’Sullivan told Eurosport.
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“With Ray Reardon, I know how much he added to my game, and I feel I would have to have that sort of impact on a player to be able to warrant being there and around them. I would not want to waste someone’s time. It is a tricky job to take on as you do not want to make them worse.”
O’Sullivan also suggested that the majority of younger stars in the game are unable to win games without being at their best, something that himself, John Higgins, Mark Williams and Mark Selby are able to do – calling on the current crop to improve at that facet of the game.
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“We learnt how to win when not playing well, we’ve learnt how to adapt, we are quite foxy sorts of players,” he added. “We can have so many different approaches in one game, switch it up a bit. Selby does that as well. That is what you need to have to be able to win, as you are not always going to be able to play well.”
O’Sullivan will next head back to Asia for next week’s Wuhan Open but has suggested that his professional career could be coming to an end sooner rather than later as a result of an elbow injury that he described as “career-threatening”.
“Potentially, it could be career-threatening as far as playing on the top-level circuit,” O’Sullivan recently said. “I mean if it stays like this, yeah, I wouldn’t be able to play. I might be able to compete in the odd matches here or there. But trying to win tournaments, not being able to play power shots, I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
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