SMTP – British Open

6th/7th January

The Short Mat Players Tour returned once again to the York & District IBC to hold this years British Open event and the field of 192 entrants included 14 North Yorkshire members. With the entry drawn randomly into 32 groups of 6, everyone initially played 5 games against the others in their group. In this round, 7 of our players failed to score but Lawrence Moffatt and Ian Ding won 4 each and Pete Sayer, Leslie Kee and Lawrence Ireland won 3. Of the others, Roger Green had 1 win whilst Rod Dawson had 2. The competition them proceeded on a knockout basis, with the top 2 in each group playing for the main CUP whilst the bottom 2 played for the SHIELD and the remainder for the PLATE.

In the CUP, we had 3 qualifiers. Ian was defeated in his first game by Lawrence (M) who went on to win 2 further games reach the Quarter Finals before crashing out 0-14 and Pete lost his opener 6-16. In the PLATE, Lawrence (I) suffered a first round defeat (9-12) as did Leslie who was beaten by Ken (8-13) who was then defeated in the last 32 (3-12). Our remaining 9 played in the Shield and 6 had an early bath after losing their first match but Roger and Jean Bridges reached the last 16 before going home. Rod however kept the North Yorkshire flag flying with a string of 5 consecutive victories to reach the Final against David Blundell (Norfolk) where he triumphed with a 13-9 victory.

After 11 matches, 132 ends and 528 woods, Rod now deserves to put his feet up, but no doubt he will back on his allotment where work never ends!