This year, the Glasgow University snooker team, led by Jeffery Chow, brought back their first piece of silverware in a long awaited 4 years. The BUSA Snooker Championships were held at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds. The team of Jeffrey Chow, Steven Morrison, Tommy Veitch, Lewis Antoniou and Anuraag Jhunjhunwala made an encouraging start to the group by getting a well-earned 5-5 result against one of the favourites, Cardiff University. However narrow defeats against the holders Queens University, and York University, squandered Glasgow's chances of making it into the semi-finals two years running. Instead Glasgow were drawn into the Plate event and, with several excellent results, went on to win the Plate, beating Durham 1sts 6-4 in the final. With Steven, Anuraag and Lewis all making their debuts for Glasgow 1sts, this was a very respectable performance. Glasgow will be hoping to build on this years achievements at next years championships. A run of great performances in the individual championships Tommy and Steven earned them both a place in the Quarter Finals. Tommy produced a shock result in ro und 1, eliminating the Number 1 seed and holder Paul Williams, from Durham. Several consistent performances seen him make the last 8, before being defeated by a an experienced player and strong candidate for the individual event. Steven also put in some solid and consistent performances in the individual event, eliminating the player with the highest break (102) of the tournament, but his run was also ended at the Quarter Final stage, losing 2-1 to 'Rocket' Reynolds, from Southampton, who went on to win the Individual Championship. Jeffrey and Anuraag will be missing from next years event and they will be a major loss to the team but young players with potential, such as Lewis coming through the ranks, the future of Glasgow Universities Snooker Club looks bright, and will hope to improve on their success at next years Championships.
Announcement: Our tuesday night free tables will be prioritized for our A and B team members until the 11th of March.
Glasgow A and B Team are as following:
A team : Jeffrey Chow(captain), Steven Morrison, Tommy Veitch, Michael Raftery, Junior Wong
B team : Lewis Antoniou, Anuraag Jhunjhunwala, Jordan Gray, Mikey Davies(B team captain), Love Mishra
Changes to Wednesday Snooker compeitition prizes, The GUU has decided to give the winners free hours of practice snooker instead of bar vouchers.
Here's how they are distributed: Winner 4 hours, Runnerup 3 hours, Third 2 hours, fourth 1 hour. They have to be used before the next wednesday.
This year's Connell Cup sign up form is up in the snooker hall for anyone that is interested in playing, the deadline to put your names up will be end of October and games will be played weekly starting from the beginning of November.
This is our annaul Freshers snooker competition to allow freshers meet the committee and get a chance to win vouchers of £50. Congratulations to Anur who won the competition and looks to be a promising player with great cue action.
We are holding a introductory session in the Stevenson building for Freshers to let them know more about the Snooker and Pool club.
After getting off to a bad start in the group losing 7-3 to Cardiff's A-team and drawing 5-5 with Queens University's A-team. Our team was able to make a convincing win over Southampton beating them 6-4 to finish 2nd in the group making it into the second group stages alongside Nottingham's A-team and Cardiff's A-team. After losing 7-3 to Nottingham who won the group we turned the tables on Cardiff beatin them 7-3 with our own Tommy Veitch taking a crucial frame off of Cardiff's top player and Graeme Pringle taking 2 difficult frames to give us a dominating lead, Captain Neil Drummond won both his frames to seal the win over Cardiff and make sure our team qualified for the semi finals against Queens A-team. After a long match against Queens we lost 6-4 who went on to win the championship.
This year both Glasgow A and Glasgow B team have to qualify for the team Championship event. Unfortunately, Glasgow B team did not manage to qualify facing opponents such as University of Cardiff and York. But Glasgow A team faced no problem with Graeme Pringle leading the way without dropping a frame, we managed to beat our opponents 8-2 and 6-4 qualifying as first in the group.
This year we will have Mark Boyle(Scottish Amatuer No5) as our Snooker coach again. We will have two sessions with him this year after our Christmas break. Everyone is allowed to come along, the fees for the coaching will be split between all the attendents. It will happen on a Tuesday night, so all the tables will be free.
Snooker Ladder ranking tournament- this is a yearly event as this will decide your early position of your ranking in the snooker ladder. Come along and see how well you can do!
This will be held on the 7th and the 14th of November this month in the Billiards Hall from 7pm til 10pm
Glasgow University A team came to a close defeat in the quarter finals of the playoffs in BUSA 2006 to an excellent on form Bristol team. Unlucky guys! The Glasgow B team also did not do as well as they could have as they suffered a late defeat in the qualifying stages for the playoffs and could not get into the playoffs.
2005/2006 Glasgow University Snooker Team
Senior Team - (Neil Drummond, Alex McTier, Graeme Pringle, Jeffrey Chow, Stuart Innes) ***
Junior Team - (Graham Ball, Fraser Ingils, Mike Davies, Steven Morrison, Stuart Miller) ***
Snooker coaching session with Mark Boyle. 3 hours coaching starting from 7:30pm. Anyone is allowed to come along. Coaching fee will be divided evenly amongst the participants.
Senior Team – Bronze Medals (Gordon McCall, Steve Smith, Colin Ferguson, Neil Drummond, Jeffrey Chow) *** Senior Individual Competition – Silver Medal (Steve Smith) *** Junior Team – 4th place (Calum Macauley, Christian Killow, Stuart Millar, Alex McTier, Stewart Scott) *** Junior Individual Competition – Semi finalist (Calum Macauley)
Having lost some outstanding players last year, Glasgow can be extremely proud of bringing back a total of seven medals at this years’ British Universities Championships. The pressure was on from the very start with the A Team being seeded number 1 in the Senior Trophy and the B Team seeded number 3 in the Junior Trophy. The A Team performed magnificently in the group stage, finishing top of the group and managing to remain undefeated with 4 wins and a draw. Individually and collectively the group of players in Glasgow A played solid snooker throughout, and topping the group was to prove crucial in terms of our quarter final opponents in the next stage of the competition. The quarter final against Bristol University was to be an enthralling match, taking place on Saturday evening with a great atmosphere inside the club. A new hero was to be born in this match, as Jeffrey Chow produced one of the best performances of the weekend in chumping his opponent 2-0. No-one could have foreseen such an emphatic victory for Big Jeff, but a terrific victory it was. Well done Jeff, what a performance, keep it up for next year! As had been the case in the group stage, the ever-reliable foursome were in the process of winning their frames for victory, but before Neil could have the chance to secure our semi fianl bearth, finishing off the good work of G Mac, Stevo, and Colin, up steps Jeffrey! Two frames from Big Jeff, and yes, as the infamous Gareth quote goes: “That’ll be the match then!” In code as usual, legendary Raymond congratulates Jeff by saying “leng ball!” (Don’t tell them but the code was cracked at one point during Jeff’s match when Raymond called upon all his years of experience, and offered the most remarkable advice of ‘chalccing da que’!!) Semi final here we come, thank you very much, leng ball Jeff (he thumped those final balls in at 500 miles an hour – we were waiting on self-Proclaimed Proclaimer Allan Wallace breaking into tune)!!! So semi final – well least said about that the better, a brave performance, a fighting display, extremely unlucky to lose on the final black of the final frame. Nevertheless a great display lads! Well done!
The B Team consisted of old boys Calum Macauley, Christian Killow, Alex McTier, along with newcomers Stuart Millar and Stewart Scott. It was always anticipated that matches would be finished off at the tail end by The Two Stewarts, with a goodnight-from-him and a goodnight-from-him type scenario! The team performed very well indeed with the old boys winning many crucial and hard-fought frames at the start of matches, for the job to be completed by the backline duo who managed to find their feet quickly in the competition despite being debutants. There are two major things to report of the group stages. Firstly, Christian completed his quickest ever frame down at Willie Thorne's Snooker Club, coming in at a time of 7 hours and 55 minutes. Secondly, David Winter was apparently moist on the sidelines as Calum, Christian, Alex, Stuart and Stewart managed to do what the A- Team didn’t get the chance to do, that is FTW! All in all the B Team played some very good snooker in a number of their important matches. Unfortunately however they were to come unstuck in the semi final against Queens University. They managed to regain some momentum in the third and fourth place play off, battling away and establishing a 5-3 lead against their Cardiff opponents. In the end it wasn't to be though, as Cardiff fought back to level the match at 5-5 and won a tense play-off deciding frame. Bad luck lads, but you can all be very proud of your displays, a real team effort and very close to picking up medals!
A huge well done goes to Steve Smith who was just three frames away from becoming the British Universities Snooker Singles Champion 2005. Steve played some superb snooker, destroying nearly all of his opponents 2 – 0 on his way to the final. Seeded number 8, Steve put Paddy’s rankings to shame (just joking Paddy!) as he whipped Big Darren Oldroyd 2- 0 in his quarter final. This match was refereed and enjoyed immensely by Glasgow legend Andrew Booth. Perhaps it is safe to say that Andy was not quite as sober as say a judge might be sitting in court when refereeing this match (understatement of the century – notice the inclusion of the word century next to the mention of Mr Andrew Booth)!! Back to proceedings then, and next on Stevo’s hitlist was Tugby in the semi final. This was a poor show from Stevo as he actually lost a frame - his first frame dropped in the course of this remarkable passage through to the final! Have some of that! Sadly Stevo lost the final, can’t quite remember the score, who cares, a silver medal thank you very much! Well done Stevo!
Congratulations also go to Calum Macauley who reached the semi final of the Junior Individual Trophy. He lost to the eventual winner, but as with the chap who beat Steve, his name will not be given due to him not being from Glasgow Uni! Well done Calum, a good show, a bronze medal to return home with, and it is well deserved for all your years of good work and participation at the BUSA events.
This coming Thursday, Glasgow University's snooker elite will head down to defend our status as British University Champions. The pressure will be on as The 'Glasgow A Team', represented by Gordon McCall, Steve Smith, Colin Ferguson, Mark McBride and Neil 'The Destroyer' Drummond, are to be ranked number 1 at this years event. A big thankyou to all the old boys who are also due to descend on Leicester for the weekend, supporting the re-vamped team. Make no mistake, this new team is ready to kick some Warwick ass! Cumon Glasgow! Best wishes also go to the 'Glasgow B Team', this year represented by Calum Macauley, Stewart Scott, Christian Killow, Alex McTier and Stuart Millar, and seeded number 3 at this years championships. One thing is for certain, a great weekend will be had by all. If Mario is reading this site, do us a favour and get plenty wife-beater (Stella) on standby, and warm up the donner kebabs!
From now until the end of term, a points system is to be run every Wednesday night in the weekly competitions. Each week the winner of the competition will receive 10 points, 8 for the runner-up etc. The overall points at the end of term will decide the seedings for the Annual Snooker competition (the one that gets your name engraved on the board in the snooker hall). This is a great opportunity for all members to practice regular competitive snooker and basically the more points you earn, the easier your draw at the Annual competition will be.
A snooker coaching evening has been arranged for Tuesday 1st February. Mark Boyle, the number two-seeded amateur in Scotland will provide the coaching from 7 o'clock until 10 o’clock. All members of the snooker and pool club are encouraged to attend. Hopefully it will be a very worthwhile and fun night for all!
This year we are changing the format of the Connell Cup. A revamped Connell Cup is to be held in the Snooker Hall on the evening of Sunday the 20th of February. The format is to be a one-off doubles competition, played to a finish on the night. Teams will be drawn on the night and the winners will receive the Connell Cup and have their names engraved on it.
The Glasgow University Pool 'A' Team were successful (and hardly surprisingly) at the first ever Scottish Universities' Pool Competition, held at Srathclyde University. Individual honours were also won by Colin Ferguson (Champion) and Bobby Reid (Runner-up). Well done to all those involved at the event, more details of the Strathy demolition are available at the Pool News section, via the Snooker and Pool club home page.
The Snooker and Pool club is now fully up and running, as are both ladders, with several challenges having been played to date. Positions on both ladders have remained fairly similar since the start of the year, well done to all those who made the teams for Scottish Universities Pool, played on November 13th at Srathclyde University.
The Annual snooker competition was won by Raymond Li after a devastating display in which only one frame was dropped. After brushing aside all the opposition up to the semi's, Stingray went on to beat Glasgow 'A' legend Stephen Smith 7-1 to lift the cup. Favourite, and last years winner Andy Booth suffered a shock 3-1 defeat in the 2nd round after playing crap. New doubles champions were also crowned this weekend with Colin Ferguson and Mark 'Safety' McBride giving everyone an intrusion to cruise to the title. Well done to all who entered.
The Annual snooker competition is almost upon us. A competition open to all students and life members of the two unions and offers the chance for the winners to get their names on the wall in the Billiard Hall. To the best of my knowledge it is free to enter and lasts a saturday and a sunday, one day for singles and another for doubles. Any persons interested should see a Committee member at the Hall or pop up on Wednesday evenings at 1800hrs. Provisionally planned for the last weekend in May with great prizes to be won.
The whole Scotland team were represented by Glasgow University this year for the Home Nations Festival in the absence of Callum Niven. Nevertheless, the guys went down to Wales to give a good account of themselves, and came back with a few painful parts after a small intrusion by England and a more penetrative one by Northern Ireland. In the end, the competition was won by the Republic but who cares as Scotland pumped Wales to avoid the wooden spoon!
Glasgow University became the best student team in Britain at the BUSA Championships in Leicester after
a very close 3-2 victory over Warwick in the Final. The team are now number 1 seeds for 2004-2005. Sweet!
Congratulations also go to the Junior Team who
picked up a well deserved 3rd Place!
Glasgow hero Raymond Li lifted the BUSA Individual title in triumphant style with a 3-0 over Alex Donne of UWIC. Raymond, already the number 1 seed, maintained tremendous form throughout to see off stiff competition and lift the coveted title. Well Done Ray!
The mire deepened last night as the lacklustre partnership of Christian Killow and Jonathan Leach continued their uninspring form against an average team captained by Neil Drummond. They seem to have set their sights heavily in pursuit of the masterclass of Calum Macaulay and Richard McKay... seek and you shall find guys!
Andrew Booth and Raymond Li were awarded University Blues by GUSA to mark their achievements in the game. Well done to two very deserving people.
Andrew Booth and Gary Porter have been demoted after a significant win for new favourites Stephen Smith and David Winter, and sneaking along are the unlikely pair of Neil Drummond and Allan Wallace.
Ton machine Andrew Booth set an even more impressive benchmark today with a sublime 98 clearance in the weekly GUU Snooker competition, going on to win the event.
Andrew Booth and Gary Porter have leapfrogged the field and now lead the table with a close encounter against Ally Fearnside and Alex McTier. How long will it last though?
In the 'A' Team are:
Andrew Booth, Raymond Li, Allan Wallace, Gordon McCall and Stephen Smith
In the 'B' Team are:
Mark McBride, Calum Macaulay, David Winter, Alex McTier and Colin Ferguson
Glasgow legend, the charismatic Gareth "That'll be the match then" Evans has marked his intention to reunite with the GUSC snooker teams in Leicester 2004 for the BUSA Championship singles. The Committee of the club would like to wish him all the best. Go on Gareth!
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