For St Andrews B to gain any ground on league leaders, Pudsey Congs, this week; they simply needed to score more points than Congs. As it turned out, they both won 4-1. As a result, Congs grip on the title tightened all the more. So, with 2 matches left to play, Congs need a further 3 points (from the available 10) to ensure they cannot be caught. Their last scheduled match is against St Andrews B this coming Thursday and then (bizarrely!) both teams need to play each other once again, to get the postponed match from the 1st of February done. Third placed Bradford Deaf Centre, and all three teams below them, just have the one match to play and so are all well out of the picture. 

In the match at St Andrews B the Deaf Centre managed just the one point. In the absence of Ihjaz Hussain, their reserve Graham Lambert came up trumps against League President, Malcolm Barnes 200-150. The St Andrews B's winners were Dave Smith 172-133 against Jeremy Dixon, Steve Clark 200-185 against Brian Robinson and Norman Procter in the closest game of the evening 184-183 against Ian Ford. And, although it doesn't appear on the scoresheet, I am advised that Steve Clark had breaks of 20 and 24. 

In Congs 4-1 win, Richard Bowes comments on the Facebook page read... "Dave (Hirst) and then Phil (Hirst) laid the foundations of a substantial aggregate advantage before John's (Hirst) scrappy game. My initial aim was securing a third point, breaks of only 32 and 38 getting me level and then in front, before a tense last 5 minutes when I thought Chris (Jarvis) would pip me at the post."... To actually sum that up, in terms of the results, Richard beat Chris 136-127, Dave beat Brian Haigh 200-117 and Phil beat John Bedford 200-125. Princeville's Martyn Britton was their only winner 200-162 over John Hirst.

At Littlemoor, the home team's evening went from bad to worse... nothing at all went the way of Littlemoor, and fully summed up their pretty dismal league season. Littlemoor's John Allan looked like he would catch and pass Graham Pearson in the closing stages, but Graham played some canny safety stuff to hang on 184-178. On the other table, St Andrews A's Gary Rogers took advantage of some good running, to record a comfortable 200-165 win over Graham Tudor. Next up, Players Table topper, Littlemoor's Ralph Allan suffered only his third defeat of the season, going down 194-180 to Neil Lee. In my own game against St Andrews A's Nigel Brayshaw, I often went to the table with nothing to go at, and then when missing, left Nigel in with a good start. Taking nothing away from Nigel though, he played some good individual shots and scored quite a few double figure runs, to beat me 200-159. Littlemoor will now need to get some serious practicing done if they are to turn around that 5-0 against the same opponents in the Team Knockout final next month.

This coming week, St Andrews B will have their sights set on a minimum of a 3-2 win, to give them any chance at all of catching opponents Pudsey Congs. Bradford Deaf Centre will be visiting St Andrews A and there'll be a foot of the table battle at Littlemoor, where the visitors need to inflict another whitewash on their opponents in order to hand them the ignominy of the wooden spoon.

The Players Table is also now up to date, and I have written a small preamble to that above this week's table. 

Please also be advised that there is a League Meeting at St Andrews this coming Friday the 22nd March 7:30pm start, where we will be drawing the next rounds of the Individual Merit and Pairs competitions.

David Howarth

League Secretary