Northern Championships – Pairs, Triples & Shield

With all our finalists from the first day taking part once again hopes were high for more success.

PAIRS: Disappointingly Danny Langdon who had won yesterdays Singles, was not able to take part as he had to attend to some urgent private matter. Luckily Jill Newsome was present and agreed to partner Neil Flynn so we were able to start with a full complement of four pairs. Jill/Neil won both their round robin games (with a bye against Durham) but then narrowly went out 7-8 to West Yorkshire veterans, Walter Stockhill and Andy Miles. Francis Boatman/Steve Duffin also won both their intial games (also with a Durham bye) and then blitzed Stockport’s Nielsen/Lawley 14-0. This was followed by a 13-4 victory over the aforementioned Stockhill/Miles before they were squeezed out in the Semi-final 7-9 by the eventual winners, Stockport’s Bill Burn/John Pajak. Our other two pairs failed to reach the knockouts.

TRIPLES: With only one win each in the round robin stage, 3 of our 5 teams failed to progress. Francis Boatman, Neil Flynn and Steve Duffin won all their qualifying games and then knocked out Darren Cookson’s West Yorkshire triple 10-2 before crashing out themselves 0-8 to a Staffordshire triple. Luckily Danny Langdon was available in the afternoon and together with James Clark and Daniel Agar had an excellent run through to the Final. Wins over Humberside’s Dave Coultas (8-4), Derbyshire’s Ivan Lunn (8-4) and Stockport’s Bill Burn (7-6) could not be maintained and the Final was lost 0-9 to Stockport’s Crowther family.

SHIELD: Overall this was a great weekend for our county with 2 Champions and 2 runners up and a semi-finalist all contributing to a points score of 16 to win the Shield for only the second time. Second place was shared by West Yorkshire, Stockport and Staffordshire who all score 9 and Humberside and Derbyshire both ended with 2.

    Francis with the Melvin Bourne County Shield