Even more amusing was Mark Allen saying Ronnie should do what he does best and play snooker and when he opens his mouth "crap just falls out". He obviously failed to see the irony.
SB sums up Ronnie's twitter comments pretty well here
http://www.snookerbacker.com/2013/09/17 ... day-three/I don't think Ronnie said it fully realising the impact it would have and recent tweets suggest he's taken in by one of the main snooker presenters when we were growing up (I'm a year older than Ronnie): David Icke. Icke has turned from goalkeeper and number 2 snooker presenter after David Vine, to the self proclaimed Son of God clad in turquoise shell suits to a major conspiracy theorist who believes humanity is in the control of giant lizards. Icke sees conspiracy and cover up everywhere, Ronnie probably thinks things are being covered up because he knows of instances of match or frame fixing during his career, or has been approached himself over the years, and probably felt a duty to "expose" and do the right thing to blow a conspiracy/cover up as he sees it.
The problem now lies in people believing that World Snooker are covering up and hiding things under the carpet. The current administration weren't in charge when most of this went on so they are not to blame for it, they have changed the culture since taking over and are moving forward. Barry Hearn stated that any player or their associates - close friends and family - caught betting on snooker would be dealt with by the player being kicked out of the game. All the players know this including some who would've thought "buck me, I'd better get my head down and play clean from now on" so what good would it do World Snooker to investigate historic cases of match fixing based on heresay without an official complaint or fresh evidence? They want to grow the game and attract sponsors and to do that they want sponsors to believe the game is clean, which 99% of the time it is. Who knows if Lee would've been done had he not raised suspicion by trying to throw that last frame against Higgins in the Premier League. As soon as he did that, bam, banned, and now we know why, and now we know why they didn't even bother wasting money on investigating that match.
I've heard many rumours of matches being fixed, but they were all before Hearn took over and I've actually forgotten which matches they were and who was involved (shows how much I care although Michie was one and I know of another who isn't a pro any more) but the name which always came up most was Lee.
The other thing which came up was round robin / league type events (like the Malta Cup in the Lee case), particularly with the dead games they throw up. This format has now gone, apart from the Championship League and I for one would never bet on a Championship League match. Would you? The incentive to win the most money is to lose the final of each group. Say no more.
So the damage Ronnie has done is to get his many fans and the snooker public speculating about things which happened years ago and are no longer relevant, and believing it's still the same today. I would be more concerned with information relating to matches SINCE Hearn took over, not before. Draw a line under before, accept that the mentality of players was different back then and move forward and try to grow the game into new territories and try to attract sponsors and not try to get everyone thinking snooker is mostly corrupt when it's not. Of course in life you get your bad eggs, they happen everywhere and Lee was a bad egg who has got his comeuppance but snooker isn't rife with bad eggs, there may be one or two around but they'll get their comeuppance in due course.
As for the Thai players who are under particular scrutiny at the moment, I think their cases need to be looked at by the relevant bodies / police and speculation kept to a minimum because I do know that a lot of pros, although believing they lost on purpose, feel a lot of sympathy for them.