NORTHERN Ireland’s over 55s claimed victory at the Home Internationals series at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds.
The quartet of Gregory Cooke, Leonard McConaghie and Belfast duo Paul Lindsay and Brendan Coiley beat England 7-5 in the final. They had earlier drawn 6-6 with the host nation, before beating Republic of Ireland (10-2) and Wales (7-5) to book a semi-final spot.
In the last-four, they repeated their win over the Welsh to set up the decider with England.
The men’s, U16s, U21s and masters teams were all eliminated at the semi-final stage.
The men’s team of Dungannon’s Patrick Wallace, Belfast’s Joel Connolly and Antrim duo Raymond Fry and Declan Lavery were edged out 7-5 by England in their opener, but a 6-6 draw with Wales and a 9-3 win over Isle of Man were enough to see them take a semi-final spot. However, their re-match with the Welsh proved a one-sided affair as the Northern Ireland side lost 7-2.
The U16s quartet of Ryan Dornan, Will Taylor, Jude Dalrymple and Matthew Magorrian enjoyed a flying start with a 9-3 win over Republic of Ireland and they were able to take second place in the group after drawing 6-6 with Wales B and losing 8-4 to England A.
The chances of a re-match with the English first-string were dashed, though, as the host nation’s B team beat them 7-5 in the semi-finals
Ryan McQuillan, Sean Gray, Brian Milne and Paul Sweeney made up a strong masters team who, despite losing 8-4 to England, bounced back to beat Wales B (9-3) and Isle of Man (10-2). However, that was as good as it got as Wales stopped their progress with a 7-5 semi-final win.
It was the same story for the U21s – Joel Connolly, Gerard Heaney, Zak Sheldon and Darragh Gallagher. They were just edged out by the Welsh on the same score after recording a 100 per cent win record in their group against Scotland A (8-4), Wales B (9-3) and Republic of Ireland (7-5)