Cowdroy makes national semi-final

A 12-YEAR-OLD from Bournemouth was one match away from reaching his first national snooker final.

Defeat in the semi-finals of the English Under-14 Championship means Bradley Cowdroy (pictured) is now ranked amongst the country’s top-four players in his age group.

And he’s still got one more year at this level.

Cowdroy’s great run finally ended at the Northern Snooker Centre, Leeds, where he lost 4-1 to 14-year-old Taylor Fish, a century-breaking wonderkid from Kidderminster.

Earlier, he recorded a 4-2 victory over 11-year-old Jamie Wilson (Portsmouth) – whom he knows from the Cuestars South of England Under-21 Gold Tour – and then accounted for Evan Plummer (Coulsdon, South London) 4-1 in the quarter-finals.

“I was really happy with what I did,” he said.

Cowdroy was knocked out in the last-16 in 2013/14 and qualified for the final stages this season via a regional event in Coulsdon last November.

Based at the Greenbaize Snooker Club, he started playing on a full-sized table at the age of seven and is currently ranked fifth on the Cuestars Gold Tour.

Mickey Joyce, a third Gold Tour player to qualify, went out at the last-16 stage. The 11-year-old from Basingstoke, who is based at Chandler’s Ford SC, was beaten 4-2 by Reggie Edwards (Norwich).

Report and picture by Tim Dunkley.