Ronnie O’Sullivan calls press conference for major career announcement

[billabong]

Does that put out one of the qualifiers ? or was the qualifying always run with the assumption that defending champ will be there ?

[Gerry Armstrong]

No.16 has to qualify.

[bigbreak]

qualifiers are still to be played yet. Ronnie will be seeded no. 1

[Gerry Armstrong]

qualifiers are still to be played yet.

That is correct but whoever is world ranked No.16 at the cut off will now have to qualify.

[NorthWestJunior]

Delighted with that. Snooker took a massive blow losing Hendry. Losing Ronnie would really take the appeal of watching the game out of it for me.

[Gary Hall]

Did he not mention his plans for next season?

[Bazil]

Snooker took a massive blow losing Hendry.

I'm not sure that's really true - unless you include a massive dollop of sentimentality.

He had been well past his best for a long time. He hadn't been regularly competing at the sharp end of tournaments and he certainly hadn't been dominant for many, many years.

However, Ronnie is indubitably a different story - he's the man at the moment. I'm sure some people will say that he's not "been regularly competing at the sharp end of tournaments" either. But like it or not, he is at this very moment, the World Champion!