Isle of Man Billiards and Snooker Association’s Wakefield Cup final was held on the opening night of the new Cue Zone venue last Friday.

The island’s newest snooker venue, the brainchild of former professional Darryl Hill, is located at Ronaldsway Industrial Estate.

It is hoped that an official launch event will be held on a date to be confirmed when former world champion Stuart Bingham is able to travel over to the island subject to coronavirus restrictions.

The Wakefield Cup final saw St Olave’s from Ramsey take on Douglas Snooker Bar Hurricanes over five frames, with normal league handicaps applying but the winners being the team with the highest aggregate points scored.

The opening frame was controlled by Dave Kelly for St Olave’s with a +35 start over Jamie Wilson and, without any big breaks, Kelly stayed ahead to win 70-49.

Stu Littlewood (+14), making a rare appearance for Hurricanes, potted well and pulled things back, doing very well to beat Darrell Thacker by 38 points in the second and record what turned out to be Hurricanes’ only frame win of the night.

James Kerr (+7) then swung things back St Olave’s way as he dominated Chris Dagnall in the third to win by a clear 40 points.

This left Nigel Kermode (+49) a big task against an in-form Sean Corkish. Kermode missed out on a few early chances before Corkish - as usual playing to a high standard - turned it round, closing out a win by a very handy 20 points.

With all the maths done, this left Paul Smith of the Hurricanes giving away a 58 start against Paul Smyth in the final frame - this would normally be only 14 so the odds were stacked well against Smith.

Smyth rightly kept things safe and limited Smith’s chances to slowly pick off a win, the frame not reaching the colours before the hand shake and St Olave’s could celebrate and take the huge trophy back up north.

Thanks go to the officials on the evening, Simon Gardner and Don Humphries, both teams and to the excellent new venue for putting on a great night where the feedback from players was that they looked forward to playing there again soon.

MIKE CROOK