Report

Many thanks to JJ Faul for sponsoring the event, I would be very happy to recommend the venue, plus the local accommodation to which JJ has an agreement for price.

Firstly, just to say that the venue were very accommodating, with everything that was asked for provided. There were 12 very good Supreme tables, well looked after and playing very well. The venue was open each day at 9am for the players, with 27 attending the GP on the Saturday and 46 attending on the Sunday for the Singles. There were 83 matches and 342 frames played on the Saturday in the GP, with all groups finished by approx 5 pm and the Final completed by about 9.30pm.

The downside was that both Les Boddy and Bob Love were playing in the event and there was some difficulty in organisation due to match disruption. In future there should always be a non-player organising.

Steve Adams of Essex became the 2010 Seniors Grand Prix Champion, defeating Bob Love 5-4 in the final.

Due to the difficulties experienced in running the event on Saturday, on Sunday the 8 Groups each had a listed scoresheet for all of their respective matches and ran their own groups. This was by and large successful. The original plan was to have 4 groups of 6 on 2 tables each and the other 4 groups of 5 to have one table each. However with two late entries there ended up being 2 x 6 player groups on one table. These were very slow and went on two tables as soon as possible. However all of the other 6 groups had finished their group matches by 6 pm but these two finished approx 7 pm. The Quarters, semis and finals did not complete until midnight, with Bill Rigby of Nottingham defeating local player Joe Brown in the final, again by 5 frames to 4.


A decision was made, having two tables per group of 6, to run the National Senior Singles as Best of 5 frame matches instead of Best of 3. There was some serious opposition to playing the best of 3 for a National Finals event. It was the increased number of players that resulted in the late finish.

There were 111 matches played in the Senior Singles and 448 frames of pool on 12 tables.

Over the weekend, ably refereed by Eileen Pearson (Not all of them), there were 194 matches played and 790 frames of pool.

I would like to thank JJ Faul for hosting the event, and his partner Christine Owen, plus Les Boddy as EPA organiser, Eileen Pearson as EPRA referee, and also Paula Landers for assisting in collating the scores on Sunday.

All players were very happy with the event and many are looking forward to the Seniors Tour next year. This appears to be at least half full now with many players stating their interest in competing. Currently 7 of the 8 England team and 4 Scotland players have entered.

Bob Love