The annual North-South Billiards Challenge took place in the Reading Rooms in Bangor, Northern Ireland on the weekend of the 27th and 28th April recently and was well contested and hard fought which saw Northern Ireland retain the trophy for another year after some impressive wins and good luck on their side by a comfortable margin of 18 points when the 2 day series was complete.
The first day started very promising for the Republic of Ireland when John Kehoe and Aidan Murray won their matches to share the session 4 points apiece which included Aidan scoring the first century of the event with 110 against the North’s Paul Lindsay.
The second session saw the North take a firm grip on the event as they won the session 7-1 to lead 11-5 despite the Republic’s Anthony O’ Flaherty compiling a 96 break in his loss to Korbin Lowe.
North slightly edged the third session 5-3 despite the fact that Joe Doheny of the Republic also got a 96 break in a drawn match with Keith McCready. Session 4 saw the North keep up the intensity to take an impressive 7 points out of 8 to go into the second day with a resounding 14 points lead of 23-9 with the Republic with all to do.
Day 2 saw Northern Ireland continue where they left off winning 8-2 in session 1 and increase the lead to 18 points, Aidan Murray was still playing the best for the Republic with an 82 break in his win against Korbin Lowe in the 400up matches.
By now it was apparent that Northern Ireland were not going to be caught and the second session saw the North’s Kenny Campbell claim the highest break of the event with 123 in his convincing win over Anthony O’ Flaherty and the trophy was safe in Northern hands after a 6-2 session success with two sessions to spare.
Korbin Lowe of the North scored a 74 unfinished break in his drawn match with Lloyd Myers but the last two sessions saw the Republic win both sessions 5-3 which included Aidan Murray and John Kehoe win 150 matches by 2-0 especially John winning the second game with a 34 break and win by 1 point when the time clock sounded.
Anthony O’ Flaherty won the only match for the Republic beating Paul Lindsay 2-0 and with the South playing for pride at this stage won the final session 5-3 to make the series scoreline look more respectable. In the end ultimately Northern Ireland were very worthy winners of the challenge billiards event and tournament director Brendan Devlin presented the trophy to a joyous captain Kenny Campbell on behalf of Northern Ireland.
Thanks to Brendan Devlin for his hard and meticulous work as tournament director and to Christian Kirk and the Reading Rooms for being outstanding hosts in another great international billiards event.
