Five-time world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan has laid waste to snooker, blaming its 'car-boot sale' mentality for the lack of snooker players included among BBC's Sports Personality Of The Year nominees.
No snooker player has made the Spoty shortlist since it was introduced in 2010, with the last snooker player to reach the top three being Stephen Hendry who finished as runner-up in 1990 to Paul Gascoigne. Steve Davis won the award in 1988, and O'Sullivan himself was overlooked after he won his fifth world title in 2013 after a year away from the sport.
The 40-year-old Wordsley man launched a scathing attack on the corporate influence over the sport, claiming he understands the BBC's snub despite labelling it 'a complete insult'. He told The Guardian:
Snooker is becoming a nothing-type sport – it’s kind of like a car-boot sale but with the other sports it’s like shopping at Harrods.
They’re putting so much of it out there it’s cheap TV. I think snooker has lost that respect amongst other sports – the Olympics is such a massive thing now as are sports like golf and tennis.
You look at Formula One and see beautiful-looking people and you look at snooker and think ‘God’ – you look at some of the qualifiers and it costs a fiver to get into Barnsley.
They’ve got corporate people involved and they have a massive say in who is big and who is not big.
[BBC] give it like 10 seconds on BBC Sports Personality – it’s a complete insult to the sport, but it’s what they think of it and what they believe it warrants, and that says it all really.
World snooker chairman Barry Hearn, who just last night was forced to address disgraceful comments made by darts pundit Eric Bristow regarding the child abuse scandal in football, described O'Sullivan's assessment as "total nonsense" on BBC 5Live Breakfast.
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