The persons and stories contained within this text may be ficticious. Not all the stories are true and some are second hand, or rumours or even just plain made up. The characters may also not be real or perhaps are real but with made up names.

The following happened sometime between the dates of March 29th and April 1st.
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March 30th

09:14am !!

The first thing I notice is the noise and a split second later before I can open my eyes Terry decides to do it for me. His thumb pulls up my right eye lid.

“ COME ON WAKEY WAKEY ! YOU BOYS HAVE TO BE REGISTERED BY 10.30” :x

and suddenly he is off again like a tornado charging in and out of each room in the caravan. I forgot to lock the front door on the caravan and Im paying for it in spades.

Brad staggers out “what the f*** was that all about”

I make an attempt to explain that we can get up at 10am if we wanted , then register then go back to bed for an hour but its falling on deaf ears. Terry is up therefore we are up. Gary comes out of his room scratching his head and as if Im not feeling dodgy enough everyone sits in the living room where Im trying to sleep and start a ‘breaking wind’ competition – lovely start to the day.

Dog is the only one who looks human and can manage more than a grunt or a shrug of the shoulders so he starts putting the kettle on as we mong out on the couch. Everytime I cough or try to clear my throat all I can taste is Red Bull.

10:20am

We queue up at the entrance to the main hall and hand in our registration cards. In return we get a pink wristband like those you use to put round people in hospitals or mental institutions. I cant believe its bright pink, I mean for goodness sake what sort of prat makes 2000+ male pool players wear bright pink wristbands. We cant take them off either as we need them to access the pool room. If you make it through to Sunday you have to keep them on all Saturday night so if you go out to the bars you all look like you are on a night outing with the Sunshine Club.

10:45am

We are on table 4. Scott Yardleys team are two tables down and are quite frankly devastating. They hammer two teams 15-3 and 10-1 which includes Bracknell & Ascot. They go on to win their last 32 match 10-2 as well but incredibly get knocked out in the last 16 when they lose the first eight frames of the match. It just shows the standard of some of these teams that a side can lose just 6 frames out of 41 and yet get slaughtered 10-2 in the next round. :shock:

11:00am

I manage a tuna roll and a cup of tea and watch our opponents. Walsall lose to NVLPA 12-6 and so have to play us while NVLPA sit back with two points already in the bag.

11:45am

Finally the match starts (10:30 registration my arse). Im cursing the time I wasted when I should have been in bed sleeping. The game is not great and as we play 18 frames only one frame at a time I don't get my first frame underway until 1:00pm and of course it goes something like this

“good luck mate”

“cheers, I think its your break”

“right”

(one minute 28 seconds later and he is rolling in the black)

“thanks mate – COME ON WALSALL !!”

Terrific. Four hours sleep is followed by three hours sat in a hot, smokey pool hall and when I get the cue out of its case I’m broke and dished without getting a shot. Can things get any worse than this?

“Well done Wallsy you twat” says Andy “ Oy , remember you’re timekeeping now as well yeah ? you have to timekeep Terrys game” :evil:

Cosmic, and another 25 minutes pass as I stand there clicking the stopwatch every so often and announce “thirty seconds” at regular intervals.

I get my second frame at 14:05 !! Thankfully I get my hand on the table and stumble to victory so I feel a little better. We finish up with a 10-8 win and so its us against NVLPA to see who qualifies for the next round.

15:10pm

NVLPA take the first frame and we are up against it straight away. They can afford a 9-9 draw as they have a better frame difference than us so we are 1-0 down already and need ten of the next 17 frames.

But suddenly everyone starts to click, 1-1, 2-1 us , 3-1, 4-1 , 5-1 … Im starting to feel much better as my frame rolls round and we are 5-1 up.

“good luck mate”

“cheers, I think its your break”

“ta”

Im getting this deja vu feeling and sure enough he dishes up from his visit. Its 16:10pm and in six hours I have played 3, been done twice and won once.

“You are rubbish man! .. Oh and its your turn to ref so don't go anywhere !” :(

The only thing to cheer me up is that my bet on the football has come in and we go on to hammer them 10-3. They are stunned and quite frankly so am I, in fact I don't even get a second frame because the match is over. Once they were a few frames behind us they collapsed under the pressure. Silly mistakes, daft shot selection and us playing well meant that we were into the last 32 which was more than I expected.

17:15pm

So after the good news of qualifying came the bad – we are playing Rochester from Kent. I don't recognise them but Brad knows most of them from the Professional Tour and the Regional Tours. Amongst others the side contains :

Ian Hubbard – ranked 6th in the UK and has won the world team title with England
Jordan Church – World Junior champion 2005
Jamie Kitchen – UK tour player
Willie Anderson – Scotland International
Ian Kettel – 16th on the International Pool Tour rankings

And that's where our problems began. Not that we were outclassed but that most of the team seemed to panic and were already beat before they started. In the last 32 you play on two tables next to each other so the match passes very quickly and a bad 10 minutes on the baize can cost you dearly – and it did.
We were 4-0 down in next to no time and apart from Neil Ward clearing up against Brad the other frames were all winnable but we did not take our chances and missed some makeable pots. Dog stopped the rot beating Jamie Kitchen and I took out Dean Cole bringing it to 6-2 but the damage was done.

Brad faced ‘Old Mother’ Hubbard in the second half of matches and broke as Hubbard was getting his cue out. Unfortunately for Rochester by the time Hubbard got there the cupboard was bare (except for the 7 yellows and a lovely dish the Bear had left him). :lol:

At 7-3 we needed to take the next two to stand any chance but it wasn't to be. John Shiel had two shots with four reds left but missed and Andy was unfortunate to lose to a fluked yellow. Danny Rajput played an excellent frame against Ian Kettel to drag another one back, but it was all over when Dog rattled a simple black and the Rochester player slammed in an incredible double to finish us off. It was 10-4 over and out good buddys.

I didn't get a second frame (again!) so the sum total of my performance was four frames, won two and no shot in the other two. Brad top scored with 5 out of 6 as expected.

For the record Rochester made it to the final only to lose to Tommy Donlans side. You can see the results here :

http://www.epa.org.uk/intlea07res.php (round robin stage)
http://www.epa.org.uk/intlea07last32.php (last 32 and up to the final)

Sloughs Renegade A went out at the same stage as us 10-6