Denis Wood Memorial Birmingham

Off to Birmingham to play in this new Open Comp. I arrived at 9.15am and Saw Paul Wood the sponsor waiting outside. I introduced myself to him later in the day. He seems a lovely man very keen on sports and so was his dad.

My targets for day were to win a game or at least score 100 or more in each game.

First game playing Paul Snowden. He was a little rusty not having played for 6 weeks. But he was still to good for me at the half way stage we were level on 70 points each. he began to find his form and pulled away with a couple of 40 breaks. The highest I got was 23.

Result Paul Snowden 232-140

My second game was against Geet Sethi. I was prepared for an absolute thrashing. We strung off to see who would start, I WON. He broke off and I scored 14. He missed again and I scored 25.
I played another shot missed and he knocked in 107, followed by 87, 43,59, 37,44.

Final Result Geet Sethi 447-128

Played Mick White next I had not seen him play but he was quite a steady player. I ran in breaks of 25,26,31. He got several 40 breaks. Nice chap though he had quite a bit of running but deserved to win.

Final Result Mick White 300 - 196

My next match was against Michael Williams, one of the Juniors coming through into the senior ranks. He played very a nice game always looking to get to the top of the table. I played fairly well against him holding him to a level game after 45 minutes. He had a nice 52 break and followed it with a 36. I had 38,26,29. At the end it was only his last two breaks that separated us.

Geet was on the table next to me playing Mick White. He hardly missed a shot running away by 700 points after getting a 300 break and another two 100 breaks. Awesome.Perhaps I did OK against him in that case.

I refereed a couple of matches Tina Owen-Sevilton v Eddie Fielding. Tina can really pot not bad at Billiards she got a couple of nice 30 breaks. She was just beaten by Eddie who got a nice 50 off an outrageous fluke.

I also refereed Phillip Welham and Joe Graham. The match was very scrappy. After 30minutes Phil Knocked in a 65, and followed it with a couple of 30's and a 49. In 20 minutes he had pulled away 200 points. Very nice touch he has especially around the top of the table.

Back to Birmingham in the morning for the plate matches. I was a bit upset as I would have booked a hotel for the night if I had known there was going to be a plate. I had already checked this with Paul Dunning. Still it's only a bit of fun. I think there was a bit of an outcry that there wasn't a plate. At least I will get to watch the finals.

Still I scored over 100 in each match so I was delighted. Just wish I could have won a game.

As an additional note Paul Snowden also knocked in a 100 break against Mick White.