Cardiff Take UPC 9-ball Championship Back To Welsh Soil

Riley’s Solihull was treated to a feast of pool, as Cardiff University became the first university outside England to win the Team Championship by defeating the University of Bristol in a keenly contested final. In the Billiards Boutique Individual Championship, Adam Shaw from the University of Nottingham won a one-sided final to prevent Cardiff’s Shaun Hill completing a Welsh double!

The team event had a new format this season with the two highest 1st-placed teams in each of the four groups going to the Championship play-offs with the best placed team not qualifying for the Championship going forward to the Trophy play-offs. Retaining the existing double-elimination formula, there was all to play for!

Last year's Champions Nottingham 1st, who had the task of competing without Paul Edwards for the first time, could only make the Trophy play-off as they came unstuck against the 'surprise package' University of Leeds in a major upset. Nottingham's opponents last year, Gloucestershire 1st brought a lot of new blood to the tournament and fell at the first hurdle with Cardiff 1st and Edge Hill 1st progressing in Group B. Much-hyped Wolverhampton 1st made light work of their group to progress alongside Reading 1st. University of York had high expectations but following defeat in a key clash with University of Bristol, Essex 1st compounded their misery by ending their tournament in the group stages!

With their 1st team status and established pedigree in this tournament, Nottingham 1st proved too strong for the others in the Trophy play-offs defeating Warwick 2nd in the final. University of Warwick can be proud of their efforts on the whole as members of all three teams took medals home, but could not quite make it to the peak of gold!

The business end of the Championship play-offs were still hard to predict. Warwick, Bristol and Cardiff progressed as expected but University of Leeds delivered a fatal blow to the hopes of Wolverhampton with a thrilling victory. This was as far as Leeds could go as Cardiff proved too strong in the semi-final whereas in the other, a keenly fought battle ensued as Bristol progressed at the expense of Warwick. Each set was decided by a single rack Bristol winning two of these nervy deciders to Warwick’s one.

The final was nicely poised with Dev Chadha (Cardiff) getting off to a flying start againt Pritesh Patel and Daniel Bailey (Bristol) in control against Shaun Hill. It looked as if the match between Merlin Fisher-Levine (Bristol) and Mike Lloyd (Cardiff) would decide the title and this was nicely poised at 2-2. This was not the case as Dev completed his assured performance and Shaun staged an amazing turnaround to win and secure the Team Championship for Cardiff!

The Billiards Boutique Individual Championship had a wide-open field of competitors eager to take the crown of Cardiff's Manos Paspatis who was not competing having graduated. Notable performances from Shaun Hill (Cardiff), Matt Tugby and Adam Shaw (Nottingham) were supported by an unexpected run from Warwick 2nd teamer David Spencer. In the Semi-finals Hill ended Spencer's valiant challenge whilst Adam Shaw secured bragging rights over his team-mate. The final pitted two evenly-matched competitors which perhaps could have gone either way. The break-shot proved to be the diffference as Adam Shaw (Nottingham) demonstrating a fantastic execution of the controlled break, dispatched the resultant chances and ran away to victory and the Billiards Boutique Individual Championship.

Attention now switches to the BUSA-UPC Eight-Ball Shield that will be contested on the weekend of 8-10 February 2008 in our exciting new 8-ball venue of Riley's, Coventry.

Photos, from top: Team Champions Cardiff; Adam Shaw winning the Individuals; Medal winners, left to right - David Spencer (Warwick Joint Bronze), Shaun Hill (Cardiff - Silver), Adam Shaw (Nottingham - Champion), Matt Tugby (Nottingham Joint Bronze)

UPC Nine-Ball Championship / Trophy Results