Worcestershire
Area Coach
John Smith, Holt Heath, WR6
01905 621872
Leagues
Evesham & D.B.S.L. – has a summer league with 8 teams and a winter league with 4 teams. F. Davis, 211 Pershore Road, Evesham, Worcs. 01386 446022.
Midland Counties B.L. – has 6 teams. John Smith, Woodend, Seven Heights, Holt Heath, Worcester, WR6 6NX. 01905 621872.
Worcester Area Invitiation B & S.L. – has 11 teams. Dave Griffin, 178 Bromwich Road, St Johns, Worcester, WR11 6NB.
Evesham Billiards League operates with 8 teams, summer only.
Contact Dean Powell, 3 Bramley Barn, Grange Lane, Harvington, Evesham. WR11 8NL
(01386) 871100.
Worcester Invitation B & S League has 7 billiards teams competing this season.
Contact Ian Ludwig, 43 Comer Gardens, Worcester. WR2 6JA. (07775) 806877
The Midlands Counties League – In Depth Reports 2012
The dawn of another Midland Counties Billiards League season, one to look forward to with a sense of excitement and anticipation as six teams are in the mix, the most since 2001/02 began with seven sides, but finished with six, and fell to only four the next year.
A very warm welcome is extended to all – the four contenders from last year, a returning Stafford Institute, stalwarts for thirteen years until taking a season off, and a brand new side made up from Evesham League players. The Institute lads will need no introduction, but who are these Evesham pretenders? Captain Dean Powell has already got sixty Midland League games under his belt for Worcester and has shown that he is a doughty competitor, while veteran Mick Parker has only one match appearance to his name, but has twice taken part in our end of season one day event. Tony Baylis will be known as a very handy player indeed by the Leamington Leaguers while Neil Parker, son of Mick, is a snooker player of local renown whose billiards technique is progressing all the time. That leaves the dark horse, Kei Nishigaki, not much billiards experience but he sure knows where the pockets are – Evesham will be no pushovers! An interesting registration for Coventry Parkstone is David Eggington – Eggington was a player of some repute around the Midlands as long ago as the 1960’s & 1970’s but has spent many years abroad.
Ten players, giving us two round robin groups to play half-hour games off 50% handicaps, attended our end of season one-day tournament on 22nd April 2012. No one survived the group games unbeaten, not quite!! Group ‘A’ saw Geoff Barrett and John Smith grab three victories each, to just edge out Dave Hall’s two wins and a tie, the tie coming in Hall’s first test against Mick Parker. Likewise in Group ‘B’ Richie Evans and Dean Powell were each successful three times, Evans not over-exerting himself to notch his wins by 1, 3 and 4 points, before losing to Powell by a clear 5! The Group ‘B’ qualifiers prevailed in the one hour semi-finals, before Evans reversed his group defeat by Powell to claim the £50 winners prize by a comfortable 101 points. The ‘Plate’ produced some keen contests, non more so than the second tie of the day in the semi-final between Ted Haughtey and Geoff Mayor, Mayor winning in extra time before conjuring up a couple of runs of 40+ to down Dave Hall in the final.
Our annual meeting took place with the ten players from the competition in attendance and apologies recorded from Malcolm Lax, Norman Routledge, Wayne Holbrook and Chris Ward. After discussion it was agreed that the penalty for late playing of matches be relaxed a little, so in future no points deduction will be applied as long as games are played before the scheduled date for the following round of league matches (see new Rule 4). It was also agreed that although the normal handicap range should remain at 0 to receive 300, if an exceptional player (e.g. English Champion Matthew Sutton, season 2010/11) took part in the League their handicap could be extended into minus points.
Up to date news of Midland League action will again be recorded on the regular bulletins, printed copies of which will be mailed to team captains. Copy will also be issued ‘hot off the press’ by email to those for whom I have an email address – others may receive their personal printed copy by post upon payment of a £2 annual fee, purely to cover postal expenses. So let me have your email address or £2 postal contribution if you want to keep abreast of the latest Midlands League news. I do like these information sheets to be as up to date as possible, so team captains please submit the match result promptly, by post or by email, and also please inform me if a match is not played at the scheduled time – I may be holding back the news bulletins waiting for a result of a match not yet played!
Regards, John Smith.
Raunds Cuesports again hosted a challenge match against our Eastern Counties friends, and on this occasion our neighbours were successful by four games to two, but the evenness of the rival leagues was confirmed by an aggregate difference of only thirteen points – the same six players represented the Midlands League as the previous season, except for Ellis Lloyd replacing Trevor Scott.
Season 1996/97. There was no change to the conformation of the league this year with the same seven teams vying for honours. Derby claimed the title with a thirty-six-point haul, three points ahead of Nottingham, despite the runners-up winning all of their six matches.
Derby were beaten twice, but each time it was only 4-5 and they made good these narrow reversals with a brace of 7-2 wins and a stunning 9-0 success over Rugby ‘B’. The top break was 188 from Neal Rewhorn, one of five centuries from the Nuneaton man, four of which were in excess of 150 – virgin centuries, in respect of the Midlands League, came from Geoff Barrett and Mick Painter, while Peter Shelley, David Rees, James Moore, Stan Day and Tony Keeling added further three figure efforts to their records. This sixth season saw the number of games played in the league by stalwarts racking up into the nineties, and by the end of the campaign Ellis Lloyd (Rugby) and Richard Ingram (Nuneaton) had became the first players to make more than one hundred Midland League appearances.
Season 1997/98. No change again to the line-up, at least initially, but numbers were depleted when Rugby ‘A’ withdrew mid-season as a consequence of the untimely and very sad passing of captain Ellis Lloyd, suddenly at Christmas. Malcolm Lax tried to fulfil the fixtures of Rugby, including drafting in Maurice Chapman for a cameo appearance, but eventually the side was withdrawn so all their records for the season were deleted. With only five matches to count in the final shake down there was little room for a bad result, and Nuneaton looked likely champions after four straight wins, but a narrow defeat at Nottingham left them vulnerable. Stoke-on-Trent tasted defeat twice, but they did enough damage in their other three games, including a stunning 8-1 victory over Nottingham, to come up with a late run on the rails and take the title by a single point. So often it is the Peter Shelley story behind a Stoke success, but this year Mr Consistent, Tony Keeling sparkled with thirteen wins from fifteen games, after losing twice in the opening match.
Peter Shelley did grab the honours in the breaks department with a run of 211 being the best of his eight tons – James Moore and David Rees were the only other centurions this year. Malcolm Wharne showed up for the first time as a stand-in for Stoke-on-Trent.
Season 1998/99. The previous seasons comparative shortage of three figure breaks was soon forgotten as nine different players knocked in a total of twenty-three centuries, headed again by Mr Shelley with 188. All the usual suspects contributed, while both Ian Hurdman and Geoff Barrett, previously just one ton each, added to their haul and snooker pro Mick Price hit two hundreds for Nuneaton in his only full season. For the second year in a row Nuneaton were edged out of the title by a solitary point, this time around by Derby, though it should be noted that the East Midland team did win all of their games. New teams from Stafford and Worcester increased the total back up to eight and resulted in Midland League debuts for Stafford’s Chris Ward and Worcester’s Richard King and Matt Jones, as well as a return to League action for Malcolm Wharne and Jim Cummings. Elsewhere new faces to show were John Rees (Derby) and Clive Everton for Kidderminster – Everton played two matches and won all six of his games and therefore is the only player to have competed in the Midlands Billiards League without tasting defeat.
FIXTURES – SEASON 2012/13.
16th September
STAFFORD INSTITUTE V COVENTRY PARKSTONE
NUNEATON ATACK V STAFFORD UNIVERSAL
WORCESTER V EVESHAM
21st October
WORCESTER V NUNEATON ATACK
STAFFORD UNIVERSAL V STAFFORD INSTITUTE
COVENTRY PARKSTONE V EVESHAM
18th November
STAFFORD INSTITUTE V WORCESTER
COVENTRY PARKSTONE V STAFFORD UNIVERSAL
EVESHAM V NUNEATON ATACK
16th December
WORCESTER V COVENTRY PARKSTONE
NUNEATON ATACK V STAFFORD INSTITUTE
STAFFORD UNIVERSAL V EVESHAM
To be arranged anytime before 31st December
STAFFORD UNIVERSAL V WORCESTER
COVENTRY PARKSTONE V NUNEATON ATACK
EVESHAM V STAFFORD INSTITUTE
20th January
COVENTRY PARKSTONE V STAFFORD INSTITUTE
STAFFORD UNIVERSAL V NUNEATON ATACK
EVESHAM V WORCESTER
17th February
NUNEATON ATACK V WORCESTER
STAFFORD INSTITUTE V STAFFORD UNIVERSAL
EVESHAM V COVENTRY PARKSTONE
17th March
WORCESTER V STAFFORD INSTITUTE
STAFFORD UNIVERSAL V COVENTRY PARKSTONE
NUNEATON ATACK V EVESHAM
21st April
COVENTRY PARKSTONE V WORCESTER
STAFFORD INSTITUTE V NUNEATON ATACK
EVESHAM V STAFFORD UNIVERSAL
To be arranged anytime before 30th April
WORCESTER V STAFFORD UNIVERSAL
NUNEATON ATACK V COVENTRY PARKSTONE
STAFFORD INSTITUTE V EVESHAM
Just a reminder that the dates shown in the fixture list are “scheduled dates” but games may be mutually rearranged before these dates, or afterwards, but before the following round of games are scheduled – please let me know if any game is rearranged.
The highlighted fixtures are to be arranged at any mutually convenient time, but please make every endeavour to complete the first one by the end of December and the second one by the end of April – I would suggest that it would be prudent to attempt to play these fixtures earlier rather than later.
As always it is the responsibility of the home team to make contact with opponents to confirm the date and arrange a start time.
It is my intention to have our ONE DAY INDIVIDUAL HANDICAP TOURNAMENT AND LEAGUE MEETING ON SUNDAY, 19th MAY – this is a little later than normal as a result of fitting in extra fixtures and also, out of consideration for our host club, avoiding their usual busy time towards the end of, and after, the World Professional Snooker Championship.
COVENTRY PARKSTONE
Parkstone Working Mens Club, 846 Foleshill Road, Coventry. CV6 6GS. Tel 02476 724860.
Contact – Malcolm Lax, home 01933 625184.
Email heleneandmalcolm@hotmail.co.uk
Handicaps – P Shelley +10; A Orton +125; R Evans +200; D Eggington +220; M Lax +275;
EVESHAM
Pockets Snooker Club, Rear of 9 Church Street, Kidderminster. DY10 2AD. Tel 01562 740291
Contact – Dean Powell, home 01608 651942; work 01386 425200; mob 07710 610108.
Email dean@smartofficesol.com
Handicaps – D Powell +175; T Baylis +200; N Parker +210; K Nishigaki +260; M Parker +300;
NUNEATON ATACK
Atack Snooker Club, Regent Street, Nuneaton. Tel 02476 385808
Contact – Chris Hudson, home 02476 544560, mob 07552 160213,
Email chrishudson4137@gmail.com
Handicaps – G Barrett +125; D Hall +210; N Croft + 225; A Brough +250; C Hudson +300;
H Willis +300;
STAFFORD INSTITUTE
Stafford Institute, 10 Victoria Street, Stafford. ST16 3AP. Tel 01785 259059
Contact – Malcolm Wharne, home 01785 254657, evening at Institute
Email j.wharne@sky.com
Handicaps – R Wharne +90; M Wharne +170; J Cummings +200; T Norman +220;
STAFFORD UNIVERSAL
Stafford Institute, 10 Victoria Street, Stafford. ST16 3AP. Tel 01785 259059
Contact – Chris Ward, mob 07753 627011
Email chris.ward@dataflexnet.com
Handicaps – C Ward +110; N Routledge +110; W Holbrook +200; P Stanyer +200
WORCESTER
Pockets Snooker Club, Rear of 9 Church Street, Kidderminster. DY10 2AD. Tel 01562 740291
Contact – John Smith, home 01905 621872; mob 07726 386211
Email woodend147@hotmail.co.uk
Handicaps – J Smith +125; G Mayor +160; M Painter +200; E Haughtey +250; D Cutler +250;