World Championships 2014 - LIVE
Nov 11, 2014 11:00:24 GMT
barbelman, Sir Chancelot, and 6 more like this
Post by BB Warrior on Nov 11, 2014 11:00:24 GMT
I bet in his victory speech he dedicates his win to Bill Kerr...........
WELL DONE DAVE ! WORLD CHAMPION !
Tommo clearly knows me too well.... Bill was never far away from my thoughts, especially during a fairly emotional game against Tony Jenner in the Last 16 that I was very lucky to win.
What can I say, the whole weekend was amazing and the result has not really sunk in yet.
A huge thank you to Sean and Graeme for their brilliant work on the Admin Desk during the competition, also to Nigel Ryall who provided and set up the tables which were the usual high standard.... without them and the others involved in other competitions throughout the year these events would not take place.
I was truly amazed at the amount of support that I received before, during and after the final.... something that I will certainly never forget and proof of the great "community spirit" that exists in bar billirds at all levels of our game.
I certainly rode my luck to reach the final.... a last ditch 5k break to just overhaul Ashley Malorey in the last 32.... TJ lost a potentially match winning break in the second leg of the last 16.... Martin Cole and I both had many chances to win our quarter-final game with me limping over the line in the end.... Mike Daw very unfortunate to lose his opening break in the second leg of the semi-final with the scores almost level at that stage.
The final itself I will remember always.... Kevin surprisingly gave me an early chance, I got the break back and promptly mucked it up. On my next visit to the table I played probably the worst shot ever seen in a final and completely missed the ball I was aimimg at and then watched Kevin make a superb break of nearly 15k to play the rest of the table out. The start of my break game was scratchy (to put it kindly) as I missed my first split and left a ball in front of the 100 hole, a cross-table shot cleared that and the cue ball just missed the peg and my next shot fluked a ball back into the 50 hole to give me the break back! I settled down a bit after that although was lucky when a 20 split whipped into the 10 hole later in the game and had one other excursion up the table after missing a 10 split before touching up as the bar dropped.
The rest of the evening was something of a blur.... Kevin was as gracious in defeat as he ever is in victory, a truly great player who is never easy to beat.... luckily the handshakes and congratulations that followed just about exceeded the number of bacardi and cokes that seemed to keep appearing in my hands or the hangover would have been worse than it was yesterday morning.... my karioke debut was assisted greatly by Harry Barbet, Jim Millward, Mark Trafford, Trevor Gallienne and a couple of others who were roped in to help.... although you will have to ask Trevor why we sang "Two Little Boys" by Rolf Harris to mark the occasion as I am pretty sure that was his choice!!
Congratulations to Nigel Senior who beat Rob Hall to win the Plate Competition in a very good final, great to see 2 of the other Sussex "Young Guns" (Mike Daw and Martin Cole) reaching the very late stages of the main competition.... congratulations also to Trevor Gallienne and Jim Millward on their win in the Doubles adding another title to the (very long) list of world titles between them after beating Mark Trafford and Keith Hollis in the Final.
Lastly.... thank you to two people who gave me so much support over the whole weekend.... my team mate Jim Millward who was always there to support and give very useful tips on certain shots, a true friend and a great player.... and, of course, to Colleen who helped me to believe.