Features

This feature first appeared in early 2008.

In sport, image is everything. Footballers are endlessly being told that they are role models and that they have a duty to set a good example to their young fans. Whenever any Premier League star goes off the rails, the letters pages of every national newspaper are infiltrated with letters from parents saying that these players have a duty to set a good example both on and off the pitch. Yes, we’ve heard it all a million times before, so I won’t repeat the tired old speech again now.

When we think of image, sport and role models, our minds quite naturally turn to football, and rightly so, as it is undoubtedly the sport which appeals to Britain’s children the most. Yet setting a good example extends to all sports, not just football.

There have been plenty of examples outside football just recently. Listening to a radio phone-in about Dwain Chambers’ return to athletics a few weeks ago, there was one call after another from parents wondering how they can look their children in the eye and tell them not to cheat, now that Chambers was allowed to compete again. And hey, it’s Olympic year, so you can be certain the whole drugs in sport question will crop up time and time again over the coming months.

Even sports that do not rely much on physical prowess know that image is important. When the Professional Darts Corporation launched in the mid 1990s, with the aim of putting the sport back on television on a regular basis, one of the first things they did was to ban drinking alcohol and smoking on stage. Dick Allix, Tommy Cox and the other founders clearly realised that no matter how talented and dedicated the players, if they were to be seen behaving like this on screen, their sport would not be an attractive proposition to broadcasters and advertisers, and parents would not necessarily want to sit down with their children and watch it, because the players would not be setting a suitable example.

Snooker has been treading a similar path, albeit in a more piecemeal way than darts. Going back to when the snooker was at its most popular in the 1980s, Barry Hearn, who at the time managed most of the top players, knew the importance of image when putting together his Matchroom Team. Every player he managed had to comply with the required image- clean-cut, well presented and family-friendly. When Jimmy White signed up, he was expected to clean up his lifestyle, and to a lesser extent so was his pal, Tony Meo. When Terry Griffiths resumed his smoking habit after managing to quit for a few years, Barry was furious, to put it mildly. He was never too keen on seeing his players smoke on television, but Terry insisted it was the only way he could control his nerves.

Barry never for a second considered signing up Alex Higgins. He knew full well that The Hurricane was too much of a risk, and susceptible to go off the rails and do his own thing. The obnoxious Howard Kruger took it upon himself to set up a rival team of players, called Framework, in which he sought to sign up what he called an “exciting” team of players, led by Higgins, which became a team of snooker’s so-called “bad boys”. In reality, advertisers and sponsors hardly rushed to be associated with such high-risk players, and such a team was never going to be an attractive commercial proposition.

Barry, on the other hand, pitched his team perfectly, and Matchroom Sport became a commercial success. He probably won’t thank me for reminding the public of this, but at one stage there were Matchroom slippers on sale, and men entering arenas for snooker exhibitions could expect to be squired with Matchroom aftershave by dolly birds. The rest, as they say, is history, and Matchroom Sport is now involved with all sorts of different sporting events.

Into the modern era, and snooker’s image has faced many challenges in improving its image. Central to this was the tobacco ban. There appears to be no logical reason why sporting events should not be sponsored by tobacco when one thinks about it for any more than a few seconds. Yes, we are all aware that smoking does not do our health any good and that young people watching should not be encouraged to take up the habit.

But then again, look at what has happened to most sports, including snooker, as a result of the ban. Tobacco sponsorship has been replaced by adverts for online gambling firms and alcoholic drinks. Neither of these habits, when done to excess, can exactly be described as “healthy” either. Besides, is there anyone out there who ever took up smoking as a result of a snooker tournament being sponsored by a tobacco manufacturer? No, didn’t think so. Of course, the true purpose of tobacco advertising was brand switching.

Players smoking, on the other hand, is a different matter. As Barry Hearn knew more than twenty years ago, a player smoking whilst sitting in his chair does neither his image, nor that of the sport any good. The players themselves are role models, and they have a duty to promote a healthy image to young people watching. That is why the ban on players smoking whilst sitting in their chairs is to be welcomed. By the time that ban came in, only Stephen Lee was regularly seen smoking. Other leading players who smoke (and there are a fair number of them) chose not to do so in the arenas.

With only a few examples of unsavoury behaviour from snooker players in recent years, it is safe to say that virtually all snooker players are suitable role models for young people. The practice, dedication and commitment they put into their trade is an example to all youngsters, regardless of whether or not they wish to pursue a career in this great sport themselves.

Yet snooker itself has faced problems. This is not the time to be going into the rights and wrongs of the way in which the WPBSA has managed the sport in recent years, but the aforementioned tobacco sponsorship ban certainly did the sport no favours from a financial perspective. Snooker was heavily reliant on tobacco sponsorship, perhaps overly so, until the ban came in, and the drastic reduction in the number of tournaments, and in the prize money on offer to those that remain, can, to a large extent, be attributed to this fact.

But there’s more to it than that. Despite the fine examples the players set, snooker still has an image problem, one which isn’t easy to define or solve. Most of us know what it is, though. Think back to the 80s, when leading snooker players were household names, even in homes where sport was only rarely watched. Everyone had their favourite player. Everyone had a player who they didn’t like. Every player was a character in his own right. There were the fast, exhilarating ones. There were those who could make a crowd laugh. There were a small few who, we all knew led less-than puritanical lives away from the table, but that made them all the more entertaining. Even Steve Davis was interesting. Interesting for being boring that is. Yet even his stony concentration was fascinating to watch.

The players of today have one significant disadvantage over the players of the 80s. Back then, the players who graced our screens came from a background of playing exhibition matches to earn their living. They simply had to know how to make an audience laugh, or play in an entertaining way, or have some kind of gimmick that made them stand out from the rest.

Modern-day players simply didn’t have to do that. From a young age, it’s been practice, practice, practice all the way. Few, if any, would know how to tell a joke. Few have ever been encouraged to behave or dress eccentrically to entertain a crowd.

Today, most players rarely show any form of expression when in the arena, or say anything of note in post-match interviews. That is not meant as a dig at any of the modern players, but even they would admit these are the realities of the game as it is today. Even though standards of play are higher than ever, a lot of the charm that made snooker so popular has disappeared from the game.

It is because of this that Ronnie O’Sullivan is so important to snooker’s future, and why his conduct on and off the table matters so much.

In part 2: Why Ronnie must clean up his act for the sake of snooker's future.