Sussex Open 2022

[StuC]

Congratulations to Mark Trafford who beat Kevin Tunstall in the Final to win the 2022 Sussex Open.

Mark was simply superb all day and had already knocked in three 20k breaks and two further 19k breaks before reaching the Final, in which he added a fourth 20k break to leave Kev chasing 22,220. Kev missed a split on just under 9k and turned to shake Mark's hand. Mark had beaten Gary Powell and Kev beat Nigel Senior in the semi-finals.

The Plate was won by local player Paul Jobbins who beat Redhill's Mark Fraser in the Final. Paul played steadily throughout the Plate to beat some good players and was a deserved winner.

Anita Blackman was the furthest progressing lady reaching the Last 16 and also won the highest Ladies break with a 6,860 in the Last 32. The highest break overall was won by Mark Trafford with 23,770 in his first round win.

As was evidenced by the high scores the tables were superb on the day. Thank you to Stuart Mepham for putting in the hard work setting-up the tables across Friday, yesterday and this morning. Also to Kev Hall, Nigel Senior and Matt Knight for help last night to adjust some of the tables.
Tony Jenner and James Whittle also helped massively on Friday night to get the tables into the venue on Friday night. Also thank you to Dave Ingram who turned up early this morning to help set-up.

Apologies it was a bit of a rush at the end, during the presentation and getting the tables out before the Dancing started at the club, so thank you to everyone who assisted. This included Ash Harrison, Jack Baden, James Whittle, Rick Cunningham, Tony Jenner, Matt Knight, Michael Wilson, Kevin Tunstall and Hayley Tunstall. Massive apologies to anyone I have missed who helped clear the venue.

Thank you to the club for hosting us today, the bar staff for their service and to Kristy who did a great job on proving the food.

Thank you to Matt Knight on being the MC and presenting the trophies. Matt did his usual great job in getting people to tables and scorers sorted. Thanks to everyone to scored games and to volunteering without being asked to make this easier.

Michelle Baden did a great job in organising the raffle brilliantly assisted by Hannah Cole, which raised over £150. Thank you to everyone who brought tickets.

Thank you to Nigel and Jean for doing the format and the organising of the draw and entries before the tournament.

And finally thank you to everyone who came along for making it a great day and supporting the Sussex Open. Hope to see you back again next year.

["Silent"]

Thank you to Stuart Carruthers for all your hard work and effort you put in not only today but over the whole weekend, you were immense as were Tony Jenner, Rick Cunningham, James Whittle, Ash Harrison and Jack Baden in removing all the tables from the room and into the van in double quick time. Incredible job

Thanks to Michelle Baden and Hannah Cole for doing the raffle

Thanks to all the scorers especially to the Osbornes who did so many matches and also the guys and girls from Redhill including Tommo who helped out as numbers dwindled

Great to see everyone after a 3 year break for the Sussex Open, treated to a brilliant performance by the winner Mark Trafford, well done to him on an exceptional display. Bad luck to Kevin Tunstall who finished runner-up - I'm getting closer Kev

[tommo III]

A fantastic event to spectate, played on quality tables.
Stuart C has done an amazing job in supplying the full scores on the Forum, in advance of the Sussex website and Nigel's transfer onto AEBBA.

Highlights of the day for me....

Mark Trafford showed his intentions early on with scores of 19500 and 23770 in his first round win. Early form was also shown by both Colemans, and by Rick Cunningham who carried on where he left off from yesterday's Masters;

Curt Driver had a battle royal with Barry Holt and Stuart Carruthers's 21280 proved just too much for Phil Osborne who gave it a go with 18280. There was an almost identical match in Round Two with Matt Jones winning the opening leg with 20100 and David Jones making a good effort of 17720 in reply. But also a real nailbiter between Stuart Mepham and Dave Ingram with Dave setting a target of 15780 and Stuart up to the task, winning by just 60 points ! Meanwhile Damo Coates joined his Northants colleagues in the next round with an impressive win over Martin Cole.


Relative unknown Melvyn Johnson from Oxford breezed into the quarter-finals with a couple of impressive performances, as did K.T. who beat Matt Jones by 16450-14140 and Mark Trafford, who answered Simon Coleman's 19300 with a 20870 break.


Matthew Knight must have sensed a feeling of deja vu in the Quarter-final as he set K.T a target of 18130, only to see it overtaken with 18710. (Cf this season's Brighton Mens Singles Final ?) This time KT needed two visits with Matthew unable to clear the table in between.


On now to the Final which would have graced any tournament, with Mark playing it out for 22220 and KT always chasing managing 8920 before conceding defeat.

A huge shout for my Wednesday night colleague Paul Jobbins who scored well throughout the day and is now the proud owner of the Sussex Plate.

As Silent has said, great to see this event being staged once more after the two previous years being cancelled through Covid.

[bigtj]

Excellent weekend and what a standard of bar billiards we witnessed. Stuart Carruthers working tirelessly on the admin and then having to man the back of the van to get the tables stowed away safely. There is always so much work goes into arranging and setting up these events and we should all give a big thank you to those who help do so because without the unsung few there would be no events. This includes the same faces that step up to score many games when others avoid scoring. All the time we have volunteers the game hopefully will survive and maybe we may even see an increase in players!!! Mr Knight your enthusiasm is great for the game and I echo thanks to those who stepped up to help clear the club as many that did should probably not be doing the physically being doing so. Hope all got home safely.

[jordans]

Was a great day yesterday - thank you to all that were involved, I enjoyed the day out. On a personal note, I just want to say thank you so much to everyone for the hugs and concern on how I was, I was completely overwhelmed - thank you so much xx

[BB Warrior]

Firstly, I would add my thanks to all who were involved in organising and running the competition, another great event with some high quality matches. Your hard work is truly appreciated by all of us.

Congratulations to Mark Trafford for winning his first Sussex Open title, he truly was on inspired form all day and fully deserved his victory and high break award. Commiserations to Kevin, who also played well all day to be runner-up.

It was nice to hear that the Plate Competition was won by a Sussex player, especially someone who would probably not normally be expected to be in a County Open Final. Congratulations to Paul Jobbins on his victory, beating Mark Fraser in the final.

Both Mark's (Trafford and Fraser) had been involved in a game that I believe set a new record in the Sussex Open, with Mark T hitting a new high aggregate score over 2 legs (43,270) in his opening round match against Mark F which beat the previous record of 41,090 set by Keith Sheard in 2018.

Top quality tables, some brilliant games and a very enjoyable day.

[NigelS]

Well done to Mark. Incredible Scoring.....but not quite a record, actually 8th on the list of average score made by an open winner. But the highest average by a winner for 20 years....Mark Sawyer's infamous Oxon open win of 1999 with the 29,000 break included 7 (SEVEN) 20k breaks

Pos	Player	Open	Tot Score	Legs	Average
1	M.Sawyer	Oxon 99	233,630	14	16,688
2	K.Tunstall	Charity 92	211,750	14	15,125
3	K.Sheard	Oxon 95	227,230	16	14,202
4	K.Tunstall	Oxon 96	195,750	14	13,982
5	L.Green	Berks 95	194,850	14	13,918
6	K.Sheard	Bucks 02	163,190	12	13,599
7	K.Sheard	Northants 98	160,710	12	13,393
8	M.Trafford	Sussex 22	159,550	12	13,296
9	K.Tunstall	Charity 97	186,140	14	13,296
10	J.Burrows	Wessex 92	157,740	12	13,145

[milko]

I was wondering who holds the record for playing on a Tarratt table as that was the main type of table for years in the Sussex Open ?

They were not easy to get scores over 20k because of the time it took for the red ball to come back to the tray on the break!

Milko

[johnslee]

Hi all
I would just like to echo all the sentiments that have been posted on the Sussex Open. What a fantastic day of bar billiards was witnessed. 
An amazing effort from Matt, Nigel , 2 Stuart's and everyone involved in making it a special day. Many congratulations to Mark and paul on
There titles.
As all the stats show what a day Traff had with 4 20k breaks plus one from Mat J and Stu C.
I feel a touch sorry for my good mate Fritz who was on the end of 42k plus from Traff in his first game, but did go on to finish runner up in
The plate. Mark was fantastic all day and I had the pleasure of scoring the final. Spin up,lose toss,chalk cue and run table out with impeccable 
22 grand. Over to you Kev. Sums up Marks day.
Roll on off the Spot.

[tommo III]

Those total scores shown in Nigel's table  = more than most players score in a whole League season scored in just one day !  

[paulJ]

Well, that was OK: I went along thinking my main contribution to the day's entertainment would be provision of some raffle prizes

and helping with scoring. May I add my appreciation of the general organisation / quality of the tops / the way RSSC looked after us.

Looking forward to attending the off-the-spot days the weekend after next.

["Silent"]

Jun 13, 2022 20:38:12 GMT paulJ said:

Well, that was OK: I went along thinking my main contribution to the day's entertainment would be provision of some raffle prizes

and helping with scoring. May I add my appreciation of the general organisation / quality of the tops / the way RSSC looked after us.

Looking forward to attending the off-the-spot days the weekend after next.

Sorry Paul I missed you off my post - well done on your Plate success and thank you, as always for your generosity in supplying your "quirky" raffle prizes always a little different and makes me smile - see you in a couple of weeks