Snooker: Manx teams battle well at Home Internationals

Men's and Masters sides fielded at tournament in Leeds

Report by Mike Crook:

Once again, the IoMBSA sent a Men's and Masters team to this year’s Home Internationals snooker competition held at The Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds. Expectations weren’t that high as the Men's team wasn’t quite as strong as in previous campaigns and a very late withdrawal through illness from the Masters quartet left the chances of emulating last year’s win over the Republic of Ireland somewhat remote.

A young Scottish team were first up for our Men in the round robin phase and what a match it turned out. All four team players were to play three frames against their drawn opponents in the best of twelve matches. Marek Kenny, playing his first match in the event was beaten 3-0 by a very classy opponent, Steven Wardropper but he battled hard and took frame two deep. Meanwhile, a determined Darryl Hill was claiming a great 3-0 victory over current EBSA under-16 champion Jack Borwick. Other vital points came from Dollin Mercer with a 2-1 win against Ayaan Iqbal, his first ever match win in the competition. That left our Peter Crellin in play, trailing 0-1 against Amaan Iqbal and the match score at 5-5. Crellin guaranteed IoM at least a draw by winning frame two on the pink and then calmly held his nerve with a clearance of the colours in the decider to nick it on the black, giving the Manx men a fantastic 7-5 win.

Next up for the Men were England B where Mercer, on the livestream table was fast away against the very talented Daniel Womersley and built up a sizeable lead. Mercer was unlucky with overrunning his position when in the balls and later his opponent laid a horrid snooker, having nearly gone in-off in the process, the resultant fouls from Mercer turned the frame the Englishman’s way. Frames two and three also went to Womersley, the latter including a 60 break. Darryl Hill lost 2-1 to Joshua Cooper, where at 1-1 Cooper then restricted Darryl to a single point. Three 30+ breaks and some run for Peter Crellin put him two up on Westley Cooper before his young opponent ran away with the final frame. Marek Kenny picked up a well deserved point by taking the 2nd frame with great cueing off the middle jaws on frame ball against Jason Tart. Again, Tart showed his class in the final frame. But congratulations to Kenny for taking a frame at this level of competition. Defeat for our men in the end but a positive result looked possible until the remaining last three frames rapidly went the way of the English. Final score, IoM 4-8 England B.

In their final round robin match the Men needed to win to have a chance to qualify for the Championship knockout. On paper this was the toughest match of this stage and so it proved. Liam Davies defeated Kenny 3-0 and had breaks of 80 & 57, Marc Shaw (67) beat Mercer 2-1, another good performance from Mercer who felt he could have even pinched it. Hill lost on the final black, 2-1 where Jack Bradford struck 80 in frame two to level. Peter Crellin was 2-0 down to Alfie Davies but fought hard to grab the last frame on the black, predictably doubled! This frame was to leave him the highest ranked Manx player in the Men’s event, just above Hill. Final score IoM 3-9 Wales A. The result left our Men to play in the Cup (plate) Knockout, in the first round of which they ended slightly downbeat, losing 5-1 to Wales B. Mercer was the only player to register a frame win and nearly won 2-0 having obtained the snooker required before losing on pink. With Hill and Kenny going down 2-0 the winning target of five frames was reached whilst Crellin was midway through his 1st frame.

Meanwhile, our Masters team, (players aged 40+) went down 8-4 to Wales B in their first match. With the official reserve, (your correspondent) stuck on the motorway the organisers kindly allowed Peter Crellin to step in, but despite having chances in all frames he lost 3-0, Pete Kirkham and Paul Smyth picked up a frame in defeats but Chris Dagnall was the star performer taking a decider to win 2-1. Predictably, the following day having to field an undercooked and under-skilled reserve they found the going even harder with 10-2 and 9-3 defeats to Northern Ireland A and Republic of Ireland B respectively. Kirkham did win his match 2-1 against the NI team. Mike Crook took a hiding from Sean Gray who hit breaks of 44, 68 and 62. Dagnall, Smyth and Kirkham all fought hard and took a frame a piece against the Republic. Dropping into the Cup Knockout, Dagnall was the only frame winner in the Masters’ 5-1 loss to Northern Ireland B. They certainly have squeezed in as many tables as possible into the venue, so much so that Dagnall’s backside managed to deflect a ball that was running along the top of the cushion back on to the playing surface of the adjacent table! Across the way, 1995 world finalist, Nigel Bond was compiling a 131 total clearance, playing in the over 55’s, he’s certainly still got it! 

Disappointingly, both England A (Men's) and Wales B (Masters) were unable to field a teams for what was effectively the wooden spoon matches for 3rd/4th place in the Cup. Perhaps they didn’t fancy the job but whatever the reason it was a very poor show considering the great time, effort and expense the Manx teams had invested in getting to the event. The administrators and respective associations need to ensure this doesn’t happen again where on both occasions the Manx teams were at the venue and ready to play so two hollow walkover wins for IoM. Regardless of the farcical end, both teams can be proud of their efforts. Ultimately, the Mens event was won by Wales A 7-5 after a titanic battle with England B. The Manx had given both of these teams a good game and the Cup knockout was won by Scotland who we beat on day one. RoI A took the Masters crown defeating England 7-4 in the final.