Held at the ACBS Clubrooms : 19-21 September 2008

Thanks to our sponsor, Consolidated Leisure & Sport, from Australia, the tables used in the tournament were covered in Strachan’s No. 6811 Championship cloth and this resulted in a high standard of play.

There were a lot of good matches in Section Play with Ramona Belmont once again beating Lee Rudolph 3/1 and having a 59 break.  Eldon Lai continued with his NZ Championship form and even though his score against Harry Haenga was 3/0, Harry had to do one of his Houdini-type clearances to win the first frame and won on pink in the second.

Andrew Maher and Daniel Sinclair had a two and three-quarter hour marathon that ended up a drawn game in the fifth frame, with Andrew potting the re-spotted black to take the match.  Section Play giant killer this time was Regan Williams, seeded third in the section, who hardly missed a ball, winning his four matches and ended up third qualifier overall with four wins and a +10 differential.

Regan drew Mark Hannah in the Quarter-finals who had had his best result in this year’s NZ Champs, making the Semi-finals and lost to Mark 3/1.  Eldon Lai played David Meier-Bailey in the Quarter-finals with David proving too strong, winning 3/1.  The Quarter-final match between J Chu and W Belmont went to Wyn but after being 2/1 up,  Jackie certainly had a chance to win 3/1 or 3/2 but just failed to pot relatively easy balls to clinch the match.  Paul Bason beat Harry in the other Quarter-final 3/1 with some superb long potting.

In the Semi-finals David Meier-Bailey was 2/1 up on Mark Hannah and 44 in front in the fourth frame with one red left.  Mark got two snookers, one of which David hit the black then got a 33 clearance to tie the frame and after some good safety play from both players, finally potted the black to make it 2-2.  A deflated David never looked like winning the fifth frame.  In the other Semi-final Wyn beat Paul 3/1 with what can only be described by an “old Billiard room saying” of “he was picking them off the light shades”. 

Wyn started off picking them all off the light shades in the Final, but missed a very easy blue in the second frame to let Mark even up to 1-1.  Mark went on to win the next three frames with some very tidy, composed breaks.  Wyn never recovered from missing the easy blue in the second frame.  Both finalists were from the same section and Wyn had beaten Mark in Section Play and was also the player who beat him in the NZ Champs Semi-final, so Mark, understandably, was over the moon at beating Wyn to take out the title.

Quarter-Finals: P Bason bt H Haenga 3/1, W Belmont bt J Chu 3/2, M Hannah bt R Williams 3/1, D Meier-Bailey bt E Lai 3/1.

Semi-Finals: W Belmont bt P Bason 3/1, M Hannah bt D Meier-Bailey 3/2.

Final: M Hannah bt W Belmont 4/1.

Highest Break: H Haenga (72).

Plate Final: F Adams bt S Alderson 2/0.