In a warm-up for the Northern Open Championships, three of the top professional players were again invited to Darley Dale for the annual test against local hero, Norman Dagley. Chris Shutt, Mike Russell and Peter Gilchrist duly attended, and played a series of round-robin matches of one hour duration.
Mike Russell was in impressive form, immediately registering breaks of 71 and 383 in the first tie against Chris Shutt. This latter break took Mike 26 minutes to complete, but Chris´ reply of 144, required just 7½ minutes !
Norman Dagley came closet to victory in his match against Peter Gilchrist who struggled to get going, coming from behind to just scrape home by 31 points.
After an easy victory over Gilchrist, Chris Shutt demonstrated that he could also make match winning breaks, when he put together 319 against Dagley. Not to be outdone, Russell then compiled the top break of the day with 562—also against the unfortunate Dagley. Gilchrist eventually found his form in the final tie against Russell when he ran in consecutive breaks of 250 and 52. Unfortunately, he had been trailing by some 230 points prior to this sequence, and Russell then held the table with a break of 58 to finish winner by 18 points.
| Mike Russell 383, 71 | 509 | (101.8) | Chris Shutt 144 | 227 | (45.4) |
| Peter Gilchrist 68 | 272 | (24.7) | Norman Dagley 109 | 241 | (21.5) |
| Chris Shutt 178, 149, 84 | 538 | (40.8) | Peter Gilchrist | 140 | (10.7) |
| Chris Shutt 319, 110, 54 | 577 | (52.5) | Norman Dagley 54 | 126 | (11.5) |
| Mike Russell 562, 111 | 704 | (100.5) | Norman Dagley | 57 | (8.1) |
| Mike Russell 141, 96, 58 | 350 | (35.0) | Peter Gilchrist 250, 52 | 332 | (33.2) |