English Amateur Tour – Announcement

Following our announcement earlier this week with regards to planned changes to this season’s English Amateur Tour (EAT) we can today announce that a decision has been taken to revert to the originally advertised format.

Both Events 1 and 2 will now solely be held and completed at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds on the weekend of 30-31 October.

This has been made possible by the fantastic support of Chris Williamson and his team at the Northern Snooker Centre, which has since made further tables available to us for the weekend. This will allow us to complete the tournaments on one day at the same venue, which is the ideal solution for all involved.

The high level of demand for this season’s events, in conjunction with the ongoing uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic and the risk of potential disruption to the calendar during the winter months, has meant that we have faced some difficult decisions in scheduling the 2021/22 season. The delayed 2021 EBSA European Championships currently taking place have further reduced the number of weekends available to us.

We therefore took the decision to schedule six one-day events across three weekends, as opposed to the previous five weekends, to give us the best possible chance of completing the EAT as planned.

Various measures have been considered, including limiting entries, reducing the number of frames and as announced on Monday, splitting tournaments across two venues. Ultimately, however, we appreciate that neither of these options are ideal, for what is of course our flagship national Tour with qualification routes to major international events.

We are therefore delighted that thanks to the huge generosity of Chris Williamson and his staff at Northern Snooker Centre, we are now able to start both EAT 1 & 2 events at 9.00am and that the opening rounds will be played across 20 tables.

We apologise for any inconvenience and uncertainty that players have felt over the past few days and thank you for your patience and understanding. We can confirm that it is our clear intention that this season’s structure will be a ‘one-off’, with the aim of being able to revert to five two-day weekend events for the 2022/23 season.

Entry into all of this season’s English Amateur Tour events is still open, please visit WPBSA SnookerScores to register.