OVERSEAS NEWS
New Zealand
Ranking Tournaments
The North Island Billiards Championship was held at the Mt. Maunganui RSA, from 10th-12th May. This was won by Wayne Carey (Auckland), the current New Zealand No.1, who defeated Derek Gibb (Capital City), the current New Zealand champion, in a low scoring, four hour final. Carey was 190 behind with one hour to go when he made a break of 93. From this point he slowly took control of the play and ran out the winner by just 22 points.
Derek Gibb made the highest break of the competition with 165 in an earlier round. This was also a personal best, superseding his 154 unfinished set in the 1998 New Zealand Championship. Gibb originates from Blyth in the North East of England, but went to New Zealand on a working holiday 27 years ago and has remained there ever since.
The Hawkes Bay Billiards Championship was held at the Cosmopolitan club, Napier on 19th-20th June 1999. The tournament venue is situated on the east coast of the North Island, approximately half way between Auckland & Wellington, and it attracted a very good turnout of 24 players. Most of the top players from the North Island played, but travel costs precluded the entry of any players from the South Island.
Among the field was Annette Moeahu who is currently ranked No.5 in the Women´s snooker list. This is thought to be the first time a woman has entered an open ranking Billiards tournament in New Zealand. Earlier this year, Annette won the inaugural Billiards tournament for women in New Zealand, and the Hawkes Bay B-grade championship (open to both men and women).
Players were seeded into six groups, based on current NZ rankings which played round-robin format. The top two players from each group, plus the four best 3rd place players qualified for the knock-out stages. All games were 2 hours. The groups saw no surprises, as all the top seeds went through.
This trend continued in the last 16, where Ray Habgood´s win by 68 points against Malcolm Cooke was the closest game, as all the fancied players again progressed comfortably. Darcey Boyce recorded the highest aggregate with 743.
The quarter-finals saw Paul Stocker complete a comfortable win over Tony Stephens. Merv Stewart always seemed to have the edge against Ron Milicich, especially in the second part of the game, when he drew away to win by 72 points. Wayne Carey´s game against Darcy Boyce was a lot closer. Although Boyce was presented with plenty of chances in the last 30 minutes, he couldn´t capitalise on them and Wayne Carey managed to stay in front, playing good steady billiards. Derek Gibb established a 190 point lead against Ray Habgood with approx 45 mins to go. At this stage Habgood made a very nice 82 break (mainly top of the table) to reduce arrears, but was unable to make further inroads as Gibb finished winner by 97 points.