League champions Littlemoor completed the double this week when winning the Team Knockout Cup. The Team Knockout page shows the full scorecard. The rule of who plays whom, plus the actual playing order was drawn from a hat and the scorecard shows the actual order of play as well. As is strangely (but often) the case, the regular opponents ended up playing each other anyway; and so the only large handicap difference was the one involving the two top board players, John and Richard.

Ralph Allan and Dave Hirst started the proceedings, with Ralph getting the early running he extended the ten point lead he had on their handicaps. Dave often went to the table with not much to go at and although this happened to Ralph as well, he was probably the one who was assisted with quite a bit more good fortune to help him along the way. Dave just seemed to be ill at ease with the table for the whole game and so Ralph got Littlemoor off to an excellent start with a 39 point win. 

Graham Tudor and Phil Hirst were up second. For a lot of the way, this was a closer game than the first. However, with about 15 minutes left, Phil suddenly found himself almost 40 adrift. However, gritting his teeth, he reduced that to just less than twenty at one visit. Graham played well though and was able to maintain a good lead with some excellent individual pot reds, winning by 24 to extend Littlemoor's lead even further. 

Next up were John Allan and Richard Bowes. Being far and away the league's best regular player, Richard was having to concede 120 points to John, and with that added to Littlemoor's 63 point lead, to give Pudsey Congs any chance at all, he needed to win by over 200 (not an impossibility for him but a big ask). He started off really well with a break of 58 before the clock had even showed 40 minutes were left. ("Here we go!"... I thought). With Richard attempting to disappear over the horizon and John trying to cling onto his coat tails, it was always going to be a cat and mouse affair. A 33 break soon after from Richard got me looking at the clock, which I was sure was slowing down. But, once John got into some rhythm, his "clinging on" game was doing a lot better with a few double figure breaks of his own. Richard's visits to the table just weren't happening as often as he would have wanted, but although three 20+ breaks followed the earlier breaks, when the 50 minutes were up, Richard had scored a valiant 236, but John had managed a pretty commendable 74. This meant that Littlemoor's lead was now 46 going into the last game.

Last up was John Hirst and myself. I got off to my customary slow start, but I knew full well that John needed to beat me by more than 46 for Congs to snatch the cup from our grasp. He started really well with a nicely worked 21 break and this somehow jolted me into buckling down properly and finding some better concentration. A couple of low double figure breaks got me back to around level, and although it was close, and a bit scrappy, for most of the rest of the game, I had the better running close to the end, once I knew we'd got both hands on the prize. I think this gave me the confidence to play a bit more openly to win me the game by 16 points in the end. It capped a great finish to the season for Littlemoor. Pudsey Congs should consider themselves very unlucky as they pushed us all the way to the last week in the league contest and then just losing out to us in the KO Cup. I'm positive they will be hungry for full revenge next season.

This coming Thursday will see the Pairs final... and again, this will be contested by the holders John Allan and Graham Tudor and the Congs pairing of Mick and Dave Hirst. It will be played at the neutral venue of St Andrews with a 7pm start. All spectators are welcome.

At the league meeting on Friday, we drew the Individual Merit semi-finals and the draw for these can be found on the appropriate page.

David Howarth

League Secretary