Snooker And Billiards Review
Now that the league season is over it is time to concentrate on the individual and team knockout competitions.
The first individual competition was to be the Pool Knockout held at Mountain Street club, Mossley, on Thursday, 1 March, but due to adverse weather conditions was deferred until March 8. There was a good turnout and after an enjoyable night N Burrows and D Beswick from Mossley B and R Mason and M Neale from Hyde SC reached the semi finals .Congratulations go to D Beswick who beat N Burrows 3-0 in the final.
The only team knockouts are the Berry Cup and Taylor Cup. Since the competitions started there have been many winners in these competitions. They commenced in 1954 and 1962 respectively and in the Berry Cup Mossley A have won the trophy 12 times, Mossley B nine times and St Peters and St Pauls A four times each. In the Taylor Cup St Pauls A have won it 12 times, St Georges/St Peters eight times and Mossley A six times.
These competitions are on a knockout basis and we have two preliminary matches in each competition, with the winners progressing to the semi final matches. The first matches were on Macrh 15 when Hyde Snooker played St Peters in both competitions. Hyde beat St Peters 3-2 in games but St Peters recorded the highest breaks at snooker and billiards so won the first match 4-3 and St Peters also won the cards 149-111. The second preliminary match is on 5th April.
The next individual competition to start was the snooker competition on March 22 and initially we had 23 entrants who were reduced to 16 by seven preliminary matches and the last 16 matches were also played on the same night. The players who have reached the quarter finals are Ian Whittaker and Phil Vidler from St Peters, Vas Patel from Mossley A, Alex Tate and Lewis Kerfoot from Staly Vegas, Ian Carter and Gareth Robinson from Mossley B and finally Mark Neale from Hyde Snooker. The quarter finals will be drawn on April 5.
In early April the Billiards Individuals started and the first two rounds reduced the number of players from around 20 to just eight. The quarter finalists were Nathan Burrows, Chris Edwards and Gareth Robinson from Mossley B , Mark Neale , Josh Wright and Dan Tipping from Hyde Snooker, Lewis Kerfoot from Staly Vegas and Vas Patel from Mossley A. The draw will agin be on the 5th April.
One week later it was the second leg of the prelim round of The Berry and Taylor Cups with St Peters leading 4-3 in the snooker and 149-111 in the whist. This meant that Hyde Snooker would have to do something special to continue in both competitions.
In the Berry Cup St Peters took two of the first three frames but Hyde had scored the two highest breaks so the overall scores were tied with one billiards and a doubles at snooker still to play. Hyde Snooker won both of these so took the snooker prelim 8-6. In the Taylor Cup they could not repeat this and lost 135-125 on the night and 284-236 overall.
Next week we are back to the individual competitions.
