In last week's round-up, I had mistakenly written that Congs were at home to St Andrews A. However, they were in fact away to them. This week they found themselves back at the Robin Lane venue. This time to face their nearest rivals from last season, St Andrews B. After last week's win, Congs will have been hoping for a repeat... but they were soon 2-0 down after John Bedford beat Richard Bowes by a convincing 173-123 and then Norman Procter had a closer 195-180 win over John Hirst. John's son, Phil then got one back for Congs with a good 200-165 win over "Speedy Steve" Clark. Mick Hirst then beat St Andrews B's captain Steve Boocock 170-149, but it wasn't quite enough to nick the aggregate point for last season's champions. Richard Bowes commented on the Facebook page that Congs were "pleased to have salvaged the 2 points". The scoresheet shows a 20 break from John Bedford, a 35 by Mick Hirst and a 22 & 47 from Richard, which gets him back onto the highest breaks table.

The Deaf Centre recorded the first 5-0 of the season over (an apparently lacklustre) Princeville. The scoresheet shows Jeremy Dixon won by a massive 82, Ijaz Hussain won by 46, but the next two were somewhat closer with Brian Robinson winning by 10 and Ian Ford by just 8.

At Littlemoor the league leaders, so far unbeaten this term, ended up suffering their first defeat. This looked unlikely at the half way point as home man Ralph Allan just managed to get in front of Neil Lee by 191-180 close to the bell, and on the other table once Dave Howarth got in front of St Andrews A's Gary Rogers at around the 25 minute stage, he managed to hold the lead at the bell by 197-168. Following that, there were then two very convincing wins for the visitors, the first by Nigel Brayshaw who scored at just about every visit to trounce Graham Tudor 200-160 and with well over 10 minutes left. It was a similar scenario on the other table where Graham Pearson played some good stuff to hand out another trouncing, this time to John Allan by 200-126 and along the way he recorded a 29 followed by a 24 very soon after. John commented afterwards that Graham played some "very clean shots" and that "he never really gave me a proper chance to get in". That game was done with a good 7-8 minutes remaining.

So, the league table is now looking much tighter with just 3 points separating five of the six teams. This coming week, all matches are in Pudsey, where St Andrews B will visit Littlemoor; the Deaf Centre will be at St Andrews A and at Congs, Princeville will be trying to reduce the 5 point gap that now exists between themselves and the two teams directly above them.

David Howarth

League Secretary