Nazareth House Snooker LeagueKnockout Cup First Round Matches (18 November 2008)The first round matches in the Knockout Cup took place this week and quite a few teams would have welcomed the diversion from their league struggles. As always, all teams in the competition received a handicap which was based on their performance to date and this made for some interesting results.
City Hospital Leisure Centre, a team that has never tasted success in the competition, received an 80 points start against Lenton Liberal Club and the match turned out to be an exciting encounter that nearly ended in a draw. At Lenton, Lawrence Richards demolished Lee Archer 93-33 but Rob Wallace beat James Wood 70-47 to put City Hospital back in control. Steve Dixon then turned on the style to defeat Des Oldham 76-16 before the Lenton pairing of Richards and Wood suffered a 38-72 defeat to Archer and Wallace. All this gave Lenton a 63 point leg win which meant that they must win their away leg by just 18 points for victory.
At City Hospital, Adam Goodall lost to Russ Kirk 58 - 62 and Jim Wright lost to Dennis Peet 33-62. The in-form Roy Hamlin pulled a few points back for Lenton with a 48-43 win against Steve Tring and this left the Lenton pair of Goodall and Wright needing to beat Kirk and Peet by 46 points for victory. The Lenton pair led by 38 points with just the black remaining but both of them were guilty of missing good chances to pot the black for a draw. Eventually the black was potted by Peet to secure City Hospital’s first victory of the season, the winning margin just 14 points.
Beeston Snooker Hall continued to impress with a resounding 179 points victory over defending champions Arnold Civil Defence “B”. Beeston were giving away 70 points on the handicap but Arnold could have done with three times that amount. At Beeston, talented Neil Jones beat Alan Cunningham 70-43 and Andy Spicer beat Andy Nichols 90-36. Clint I’Anson put on an awesome display, reeling off breaks of 15,16,33 and 45 to hammer Pete Ellins 134-7. In the pairs, Jones and Kaleem Ashraf defeated Ellins and Cunningham 81-23.
At Arnold, Stan Candler had a good 68-22 win against Chung Cheung, but Kirk Wesselby 42-49 to Steve Cheung and Bill Burton lost 39-44 to Shane Kidd. In the pairs, Candler and Wesselby were trailing by 17 points to Chris Hodgkinson and Steve Cheung as the result of the Beeston leg filtered through. They therefore conceeded the match knowing they needed a miracle to avoid defeat.
Arnold Civil Defence “A” also impressed with a huge 198 points victory over Mapperley Community Centre. This was despite conceeding 160 points start to Mapperley. At Arnold there was some good solid potting by the experienced Chris Winter who also made a terrific 49 clearance. Gary Spencer had to fight hard for his victory after just coming out of hospital over the weekend.. The only casualty for Arnold was James Notman who was beaten by Andy Carnell. In the doubles Notman and Spencer did enough to ensure Arnold won the home leg by 77 points.
At Mapperley the rarely beaten Malc Belshaw lost his singles frame, but Brian Kinton and John Fountain both won hansomely, with Fountain making a good 44 break. In the doubles, Fountain and Kinton compounded the misery for Mapperley with a good win that gave the Arnold team a 121 points away leg win.
BCI Snooker Centre “A” progressed into the next round after a narrow 13 points victory over Pegasus Snooker Club. At Pegasus Chris Brooks got Pegasus off to a dream start with a huge 80 point margin win over Wayne Martin thanks to an excellent 50 break. BCI's Jonathan Mason beat Jamie Mathers in a close contest 53-46 to record his second victory at Pegasus this season. The frame between BCI's Kwok Yip and Steve Booth was also a very tight encounter with the Pegasus man showing his class with a calmly taken 25 clearance to win by just 7 points. In the final frame of the leg the BCI pairing of Wayne Martin and Sam Haugh recorded an excellent 62-40 victory against Chris Brooks and Jamie Mathers to reduce their deficit in probably the key frame of the match.
At BCI Chris Piech enjoyed an excellent 30 point victory over BCI's Jason Bettridge. Piech opened up a healthy lead with a good 33 break before missing a pink into the middle pocket which allowed Bettridge back in. The miss very nearly proved costly as the classy Bettridge looked all set to clear the table but he missed a relatively simple blue into the middle bag from which a thankful Piech cleared up to condemn Bettridge to his first loss of the season. BCI's Steve Coleman soon got his team in front though with a wonderful potting display as he ran out a healthy 64-21 winner against Scott Bates. The frame between Pegasus's Mike Langdon and Neil Elliott was much closer. Langdon opened up an early 21 point lead only to see his opponent strike back after an initial fluked red with a good 27 break. From then on in it was a very open and entertaining frame with both players knocking long pots in for fun but sadly for Langdon, several rotten in-offs gave Elliott the chances he needed to make sure of the frame leaving Langdon only the pink and black as consolation to lose by a narrow 4 points. This all meant that the final frame of the evening between BCI's Hanson Stowe and the inexperienced Andy Orange would decide the outcome of the tie. Stowe had built up an excellent 40 odd point lead by the time the BCI home leg arrived back from Pegasus with the score-sheet and this led to frantic calculations and scribblings from both sides. It was decided that, providing the scoreline didn't widen, it would be the Pegasus team through to the next round. Unfortunately for the Pegasus team, Orange seemed out of sorts and a little twitchy compared to the more experienced Stowe who picked off the remaining reds and colours to power BCI over the line with an excellent 71-17 victory.
Stadium Leisure beat Cotgrave Welfare by a healthy 162 points with most of the damage being done at Stadium where the trio of Barry Stark, Clary Plowman and Pete Gormley played some terrific snooker. Stark beat the dangerous Harry Briody 82-29, Plowman beat Ted Cope 77-60 and Gormley beat Colin Armstrong 65-26. In the pairs, Stark and Gormley were rampant against Briody and Armstrong as they ran out 94-23 winners.
Things were much tighter at Cotgrave as Matt Ellis lost by 6 points to Billy Johnson and Bob Walker went down by 56 points to Steve Richards. Danny Di Folco pulled things back for Stadium with a good 43 point victory over Anthony McMahon and in the pairs, Walker and Di Folco beat John Cyrek and Johnson by just 1 point.
Oakleigh Lodge Social Club were grateful of their 200 points start against Peoples Hall as they won a pulsating match by just 30 points.
Sherwood Social Club conceeded 160 points start to Wollaton Royal British Legion but they still managed to win the match by 40 points as Mick Salton, Paul Bell and Les Smith all played particularly well away from home.
Also through to the next round are BCI Snooker Centre “B” who beat Phoenix Cue Sports. All first round losers will now be entered into the Knockout Plate competition.
KNOCKOUT CUP RD 1
Oakleigh Lodge SC bt The Peoples Hall
Beeston Snooker Hall bt Arnold Civil Defence "B"
Stadium Leisure bt Cotgrave Welfare
Sherwood Social Club bt Wollaton Royal British Legion
BCI Snooker Centre "A" bt Pegasus Snooker Club
BCI Snooker Centre "B" bt Phoenix Cue Sports
Arnold Civil Defence “A” bt Mapperley Com Centre
City Hospital Leisure Centre bt Lenton Liberal Club
Here are the draws for the preliminary round (where applicable) and the first round of the Notts Amateur Snooker Championships 2008/09.
