Well what a week of blackball pool that was, it was certainly full on pool.
Here’s the thank you’s, First of all I would like to thank Slate Pool Lounge, Johl Younger, Kylie and their staff for hosting the championships. Long days are never easy so thank you very much.
Chase Daley as head referee and all the other referees for giving up their time when not playing. Your help is very important to the running of a successful event.
To Dan Lynch and Cueball TV, the stream was first class as usual. New things were tried and more is to come from Dan when streaming the IPA World league later this year.
To my side kick Samantha Cottingham for all her long hard days answering the countless questions , for someone who does not play the game her dedication to make it all run smoothly is first class.
Most of all a huge thank you to all the players who had the faith to commit so long ago to the event and have the faith we would deliver which was probably the best blackball nationals to date.
Without you the players there is no association to run and for these events to be such a success. To see so many old faces from years past was fantastic and also to welcome so many new people was truly amazing.
BAPA is certainly the place to be for the best opportunities and events in Australia for Blackball and it will only get bigger and better in time to come.
Now on to the Championship, the week was played to a great standard with new players getting to grips with the format and the playing challenges that lay ahead against the other players. With so many new players this was always going to be a challenge, however it was embraced by all.
We saw some high quality matches in the singles right from the start with a big men’s battle in the men’s singles between Jeremy Bower and Stone Stenhouse. The match was to finish 7-5 to Jeremy however it could have gone 6-6 if not for Stone sadly going in off the black after playing a fine cut. Stone himself had a great week in the teams only dropping 5 frames out of his 32 group games.
Also in the Mens a special mention to Bronson Blackmore, what a week this player had. Being at the business end of all events he entered and coming away the new Australian Mens Singles Champion, along with the mixed doubles title with his partner in both life and the game Chellee Howorth.
In the seniors and masters teams we saw Johl Younger and Malo from North Queensland leading the way on the stats. However the top 6 only had a couple of frames between them come the end of the round robin stage.
In the ladies category with a mixture of experience and new players was always going to be interesting. Braedy-Jayne Rickard lead the way finishing on top of the stats come the end of the group stage.
To Barry Gibson winning his first title of the LDPD Individual’ and Chris Flynn for winning the LDPD Group’s. These two players then paired up to take out the LDPD pairs. With this category it is so great to see the pleasure and emotion it brings to the players. This makes running the LDPD category so rewarding knowing the difference it all makes to the players taking part.
To all the winners too many to mention in this post, you all played so well during the week. Team Finals night was electric with all matches being so close then the longest match of the night the seniors/masters team final going down to a blackball shootout which had everyone wanting to watch to see who could hold their nerve.
At the end of the week we held the fun time event the speed pool, with 10 teams taking part and a mixture of teams mixed with both men and Ladies. It is always a crowd pleaser with cheering and shouting. It certainly is the come down at the end of a long week. We saw knockout rounds between 10 teams with the winning team being Martin Shanley, Matt Pearson and Teah Reaburn.
Once again thank you to everyone who took part, I have the feeling next year will be even bigger and better.
We now move on to attending Johannesburg and the BI Hawley Cup in October where we will be looking at sending 100 players to represent Australia on the world scene. Along with this we have the first IPA Australia World League to look forward too with 3 events coming up later this year with Men and Ladies Pro events and Amateur events all taking place over a week.
These events will see us send at least 8 players over to the IPA new world Team Trophy and IPA world championships in England during February 2024.
Thank you once again to everyone making it such a great week and another memorable one.
Next year nationals will see some slight changes to the formats from feed back this year and we look forward to putting on another great nationals.
Finally for clarification to all players, there is only one Official Australian Blackball National Championships and that is held by (BAPA) Blackball Australia Pool Association. This will be the case going forward and it’s certainly to best place to be for blackball in Australia.
Until next time
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