Welcome to Senior Reports

There was a just cause for a double celebration in the Parkin household as Phil Parkin was firstly named the vice captain of the England juniors and the the potted his way to the under 18's National grand Prix.

On Sunday the semi finals took place, Phil was drawn against Hertfordshire's Perry Gillett, who had caught the eye on Saturday playing some great pool. Phil knew this was going to be a hard match, but got going really quickly racing into a 3-0 lead. Perry pulled a frame back, but Phil was not missing anything and ran out a comfortable 6-1 winner.

The National Grand Prix ( U18's ) took place this weekend it should have been in Great Yarmouth last November, but was cancelled due the evacuation of the area due because of the potential flood warnings. So it was relocated to Rileys in Coventry and took place on Sat 5th & Sun 6th Jan.

Previous competitions took place at home venues, the winners then went onto a regional final held in Worcester (Region 5), the finalists from there were to be represented for their counties at the National Grand Prix Finals.

The Round Robin took place on the Saturday with 4 groups of 6. Phil won Group 1, winning all of his matches (3-1, 3-0, 3-0, 3-1 & 3-0). He then went on to play the runner-up (Ben Green from Derbyshire) of group 2. Phil was in fine form and was soon 5-1 up, but Green fought back with some super pool to narrow the deficit to one frame. Phil held his nerve under pressure to produce his best pool of the match to eventually run out 6 - 4 victor.

Phil was now through to the final against London's Jack Pople, the England vice captain of last year. Jack had beaten Nathan Aston (West Midlands) 6-1 in his semi. Phil didn't really get started and went 3-1 down. He fought back to go 5-3 up. they both won a frame each to make it 6-4. Jack got the next frame, but Phil was left to clear up after Jack potted the white off the break, to give a final score of 7-5.

Phil's next main event as vice captain is the European Championships in Malta, for a week in February.

The U15's also took place over the weekend with Luke Mills, Luke Barnes & Vivek Makh all from Warwickshire taking part. Luke Mills & Vivek Makh made the quarter finals, with Vivek narrowly missing out on the semi as he was on for a break & dish on the final frame but the white went down after the black (5-6). The eventual winner of the event was Ian Smith (West Midlands) who beat Kingsley Peck (Suffolk) 7-5.