Week nine of the West Cumbria Snooker League summer campaign saw the semi-final line-ups concluded for the Gray’s Luxury Ice Cream Trophy.
All group winners and the highest two second-placed competitors booked their tickets into the next stage.
Group C witnessed a great comeback from Workington’s Dave Holland who came from being bottom of the group to finish as the second highest runner-up. He defeated Geoff Smith, also from Workington, 3-0 (66-43, 62-33, 60-38) to join group winner Clive Lister in the semi-finals.
With the Group B winner already decided the previous week as Seaton’s Kevin Basnett secured his place, Cockermouth’s Andrew Mitchelhill would need to bank on plenty of 3-0 results from the other group ties to stand any chance of progressing as a highest runner-up.
Group A was won by Maryport’s Mike Park after defeating Flimby’s Kevin Kirkham 3-1 (63-47, 68-42, 33-70, 89-30). Kirkham had briefly battled back with a break of 32 in the third frame to claw the match back to a 2-1 deficit.
Despite that defeat, Kirkham does qualify as the highest runner-up on highest average frame points scored.
Finally, in Group D, Workington’s Mark Tunstall joined the qualifiers with a hard-fought 3-1 (43-32, 53-41, 31-51, 61-41) win over Paul Smith of Seaton. Smith narrowly missed out as he ended as the third highest runner-up by three points on countback of average frame scores.
Meanwhile, two league fixtures were completed seeing Workington’s Dave Chapman move up into second place with a 3-2 win over Geoff Smith while Holland had a double celebratory week as he beat Brian Kendall of Workington 4-1.
The Gray’s Luxury Ice Cream Semi-Final groups will see Park, Lister and Kirkham in group one, and Basnett, Tunstall and Holland in group two.
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