Home Internationals Hat-Trick for England

English sides claimed a trio of gold and silver medals during the recent 2019 Home Internationals at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds.

Following the Main and Masters events held at the start of the annual festival, the Youth and Billiards competitions took centre stage, where England retained their respective trophies in each category.

In the Under-21 tournament, the England B team of Sean McAllister, Lewis Ullah, Mickey Joyce, Patrick Whelan and Kayden Brierley secured the title when topping the round robin with eight points after collecting four wins from five.

They finished one point ahead of England A – Jenson Kendrick, Ryan Davies, Jed Mann, Hamim Hussain and Callum Beresford – who pipped Wales to silver on frame difference.

Special mentions to Whelan who won 10 out of his 12 frames and captain Kendrick who registered the highest break of the event with a 138, amazingly twice. These runs were comfortably the highest throughout the entire Home Internationals programme.

The victorious England Under-21 team.

England also filled the top two steps of the podium in the Under-16s, with the B team of Jamie Wilson, Kaif Shazad, Lewis George Harper, Westley Cooper, Isa Ishtiaq and Samuel Lee-Stevens finishing on top of the charts with a 100% record.

The A outfit consisting of Paul Deaville, Stanley Moody, Oliver Sykes, Joe Fenton, Aiden Murphy and Liam Pullen came second with four victories out of five.

In the individual stats Wilson possessed a near perfect record of 11 frame wins out of 12; he also headed the breaks chart with an effort of 86.

The England Under-16 side collect their prizes.

• Billiards

Once again, there was total dominance from England in the Billiards portion of the schedule.

Both the A side, consisting of Ryan Davies (again), Rob Hall and Ryan Mears, and the B side, formed of Darren Clark, Gary Norman and Jonathan Marwood, (all pictured at the top of page) won all their team matches in the group phase to finish top of both groups.  They subsequently eliminated Scotland and Northern Ireland B in the semi-finals before A overcame B, 3-0, to continue a scintillating sequence of English results in the Home Internationals over recent years.

Hall, Marwood, Mears and Clark all registered centuries, but Hall set the standard with breaks of 365 and 320.

In the following Northern Snooker Centre Open Jim Williamson Trophy, Hall denied in-form world number one Peter Gilchrist in the semi-finals before losing to former multiple-time world champion and fellow Englishman Dave Causier in the title match.

For the full results from all competitions at the 2019 Home Internationals, please visit the Home Internationals Billiards and Snooker Federation (HIBSF) website here.

Billiards picture above is courtesy of Darren Clark

Snooker pictures above are courtesy of the HIBSF website