13-year-old promoted to EASB Premier Junior Tour
A 13-YEAR-OLD from Chandler’s Ford Snooker Club will compete amongst the country’s top-40 under-21s next season.
Mickey Joyce (pictured) won the sixth and final leg of the EASB Regional Junior Tour South on home tables to book a prized place on the elite Premier Junior Tour. The Basingstoke teenager actually secured the second promotion spot when Anthony Rice was beaten 2-1 by Cripps in the last-four.
Third-placed Rice, 19, from Fordingbridge, will travel to Walsall in July hoping to gain one of the seven places available at the national play-offs.
Joyce dropped just one frame out of 12 in the group stages and defeated his ten-year-old club mate Oliver Sykes 2-1 in the quarter-finals. It was the same scoreline in the last-four as he overcame Bradley Cowdroy, a fellow Cuestars Gold Tour player from Bournemouth. And he chalked up a first tournament win on the feeder circuit with a 2-0 victory over Londoner Lennard Cripps.
Joyce, whose highest break in competition is 83, is a five-time Eastleigh & District Under-19 League champion. He won the Cuestars South of England Under-21 Bronze Tour championship two weeks after his tenth birthday in 2013 and topped the Silver Tour rankings the following season.
Elsewhere, last season’s Silver rankings winner Connor Benzey (Eastleigh), playing in only his second event, won all four of his group-stage matches but went out 2-0 in the quarter-finals to Rice, whom he had beaten 3-0 in the round robin.
Steven Hughes (Chandler’s Ford), last season’s Silver championship winner, beat rankings winner Reggie Edwards (Norwich) 2-1 in the group stages. Charlie Pringle (Chandler’s Ford) matched his highest break of 56 in his first frame of the day against Cowdroy – and lost the frame, but won the match 2-1. Dan Sykes (Chandler’s Ford) also matched his highest break, which is also 56, in the first frame of a 2-1 victory over Edwards.
Birthday boy Jonny Mutch, 17, (Cambridge) finished seventh in the rankings after a 2-1 quarter-final defeat by Cowdroy, who ended the season in fifth and joins Rice in the play-offs.
Six of the eight quarter-finalists were Cuestars members.
Picture by Tim Dunkley
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