WEEKLY UPDATE 22 APRIL 2025

Congratulations to Pudsey B, who this week won the Play Off competition, to add to the league championship trophy they won earlier this year. They beat Princeville C  4 - 0 in this week's Play Off final at Littlemoor but the result was rather closer than the score line suggest - Graham Tudor beat Graham Bentley by 2 and then Sid Ash beat Keith Tomlinson by 22, leaving Princeville's Paul Devitt with a deficit of only 24 points to make up, going in to the final game against Dave Howarth (on top of a handicap difference of 65) As things turned out Dave won the game by35 thus avoiding the need for a shoot out.

Dave's report on the match is as follows:

The two Graham's (Tudor and Bentley) started first. It was a bit of a see-saw game where both had a lead of about 20 at different stages. So it could have gone either way, but Graham T just snatched it at the end.

Sid (Ash) caught Keith (Tomlinson) up quite early on, but couldn't maintain any sort of a lead & so we witnessed another nip & tuck affair for quite a long way. It was only in the last 2-3 minutes when Sid played his best billiards to win by 22.

In the game between Paul (Devitt) & me, it was a slow burner, with Paul threatening to catch me around the middle of the game, as he got to within about 25, after maybe 3 breaks into double figures and not much in reply from me. However, on a notoriously quirky table, he later struggled to make enough at each visit to get "too close for comfort". I definitely then had the better of the running towards the 15 minutes to go stage, when Paul was now having to try increase his tempo. The dwindling time was definitely still on my side. The 35 point win for me makes it look quite comfortable; but I was only confident of success when there was only 3-4 minutes left and I had increased my lead with a 15 break. The 65 point handicap difference between us, plus the 24 points advantage from the previous 2 games probably left Paul with a bit too much to do in the allotted 50 minutes.

This coming week is the quarter finals of the Individual Billiards Competition with 3 games at Princeville on Tuesday, including one between Ian Ford and Jeremy Dixon from the Deaf Centre. In the other two games Gareth Kershaw plays Peter Allan and Chris Jarvis plays John Bedford. In the game not at Princeville, Sid Ash has home advantage against Richard Bowes. The following week is the Individual Snooker semi finals, but 2 of the games have been brought forward to this coming Thursday (24th) to accommodate holidays. I will be playing Gareth Kershaw and Mick Cockcroft has home advantage against Brian Robinson. The other Snooker matches on Tuesday 29th are John Bedford against Richard Bowes and Ralph Allan against Chris Jarvis.

With all team matches having now been completed the H Kershaw Memorial; Trophy scratch competition has been arranged for Wednesday 14th May and invitations will be issued this week

Stephen Kershaw

Secretary