12-12 and all to play for, one frame to decide the destiny of the cup. There I was standing at the top of the table looking at the position of the final red ball. Its about an inch off the cushion , just down from the middle pocket. The red just needs to be rolled in and then it's a reasonably easy black off its spot and across to the opposite corner - but nothings easy at 12 all. About 40 people are in a hushed crowd, half of them willing it in , and the other half hoping for some sort of miscue, or a kick , anything for their man to get back to the table.

The red wobbles but drops to the delight of the right half of the room. There are roars of encouragement as the final black is lined up and their joy is complete as its buried into the corner pocket. A mini pitch invasion occurs and after the handshakes the captain of Racks, Scott Vann, approaches me and says :

'thanks for reffing mate'

'no problem, I was doing nothing else anyway' :roll:

Yep, Racks won the plate final with a last gasp frame win over Britwell. It too'ed and fro'ed over the final frames and having recovered from 12-11 down Britwell just ran out of steam and ran into Vic Summers who finished perfect on his last red, rolled it into the corner and sunk the black off its spot into the opposite corner pocket. It was just the way I would have done it as I viewed the table from my referees vantage point. That's exactly the sort of finish you want to see in a final match (assuming that you are the team holding the cup at the end.)

As for the Irish Champs 2B v Windsor Wanderers it all ended in a bit of a damp squib. Andy got fortunate on an easy finish in his opening frame and that small slice of luck seemed to stay with us throughout the match. Uzzell cleared up against me only to snooker himself on the black, and Steve Payne was lucky to get a second chance in his opening match. Just as Windsor looked to be getting back into it and make it 12-10 James McCarthy missed a simple black and conceeded the frame and the cup. A shame really as at 12-10 Windsor would have fancied their chances of what seemed to be an unlikely comeback as Uzzell was due to play Steve in the next, followed by Stuart Harness versus myself.

So league and cup are now over, the next couple of weeks see the singles and doubles qualifiers take place. If the draw has been made can someone put it up on the forum ??