By Dale Brimicombe
January 9, 2025
Tournament Chart:
The annual 1-point tournament saw 91 players come out to Doolys Burnside for a great day of pool. As usual with this event, there were a few names that popped out from the draw as possible front-runners, but what wasn't so usual was that three of them were right there at the end duking it out for the title.
In the final eight, newcomer Jheno Francisco sent 2014 champion Dan Deal to the B side, then dispatched John Sequeira to get to the A side final. On the other half of the draw, Harry O'Donnell dusted Mike Laffin and John Aikenhead on his way to the last two with Francisco. However, the young Filipino quickly booked the hot seat position with a win over O'Donnell. Meanwhile, Deal had rattled off four straight B side wins, which included seeing Sequeira settle for a very respectable fourth place finish. Deal was then himself relegated to third place by O'Donnell, who set up a rematch in the final with his teammate Francisco.
The true double-knockout format would see Harry having to beat Jheno twice to claim victory. Harry won the first game but a couple costly errors in the next two games allowed Jheno to jump out to a 2-1 lead. Harry beared down with a nice runout in frame four, setting up a hill-hill game which would either extend the final or produce a winner. Nerves were apparent by both players, but in the end a long shot on the 8-ball secured the title for Francisco.
As always, many thanks are due: to Jessica Grant and the staff at Doolys Burnside for an excellent day of hosting and service; to Bruce Lilly, who dropped in to sell some tickets on a Revo shaft and ended up staying and helping do the draw and run the sheet for a few hours; to Paul Gunn, who not only played and helped with the drawsheet, but sold out the Revo shaft draw (which was won by none other than Jen Reid!); to Craig Teal, who arranged for and picked up the pizza and sandwiches for lunch for the players, then stayed til the end archiving the draw ( (www.csns.ca/mpl-1pt); to Glenn Nickerson who also helped the draw run smoothly during the day; to John MacTavish for bringing several boxes of chips and snacks; to Tony McQuaid for his tireless efforts in supplying prizes to all the players; and most of all to the players themselves - you folks make the event such a fun day, kudos to you all!
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