On Friday 19th May, the WBL Irish Open Billiards Championship got underway at the SBI Academy Carlow.  10 Countries are represented in the event along with three women, Anna lynch from Australia and Annette Newman and Stephanie Foley from Ireland.

With an entry of 50 players including a number of World Champions such as David Causier and Peter Gilchrist along with the current holder of the title from last year Rob Hall, it has all the hallmarks of a fantastic event and with the World Matchplay commencing on Monday 22nd May and running until Friday the 26th May, there is plenty of great billiards still to come.

So far the standard is amazing and everyone is really enjoying the event.  There is something special about the Billiard community that just shows such great respect for each other and the gamesmanship within the sport is second to none

We are delighted at RILSA to have our members both players and officiating at the event.  Annette Newman had some tough matches against Christian Kirk from Northern Ireland and David Causier from England but she played the best she could on day 1 of competition also in play on day 1 was Stephanie Foley and like Annette had a number of tough games but again played the best she could.

Day 2 of the event we saw improvement in the scoring from our girls with Stephanie playing her best to date against Korban Lowe from Northern Ireland while Annette upped her game against Phil Johnston from England to finish 99-181 and her match against Sam Jones was very close where Annette kept it touch with Sam all the way to the final minutes with Sam just nudging the win on the alarm 125 to Annette’s 105, so well done to our girls

Both Annette and Stephanie helped out refereeing a number of matches which is great for them just after becoming official billiard referees recently

Dan Carroll and Dave Earle were on hand to referee over the two days so far and will be back in action refereeing in the week ahead along with Stephanie who will be officiating on Tuesday.  Annette was selected to play in the World Matchplay event and we wish her the best of luck in that.

Anyway we will see both girls take part in the Challenge Cup on Sunday and we wish them both all the very best.

Well done to the organisers of the event, its going extremely well and we wish everyone involved every success in this fantastic facility at the SBI Academy Carlow, especially Brendan Devlin, Aonghus McAnally, Darren Clarke and Chris Coumbe