‘Two shirts’ Lloyd in national final
A GOSPORT teenager has qualified for a national snooker final.
Mark Lloyd (pictured) is one step away from winning the English Under-16 Championship.
The 15-year-old – who returned from the knockout stage at the Northern Snooker Centre, Leeds, with one more shirt than he set off with – takes on Jack Harris (Walsall) at the EASB finals weekend at the beginning of May.
After qualifying for the last-16 through a regional event in Coulsdon, South London, in November, Lloyd traveled north hoping to go one stage further than last season when he lost in the semi-finals to the eventual champion, Lewis Gillen (Leeds).
But it nearly all ended before a shot was played.
Friends and family were urgently dispatched to scour the shops in Leeds as the youngster was in contravention of the strict dress code.
Lloyd explained: “I turned up in a short-sleeved shirt when the dress code was long-sleeved. I had to get my godfather and my dad to go and buy me a shirt.”
Suitably attired, he then saw off James Beaven (Banstead, Surrey) 4-0, Sean Maddocks (Liverpool) 4-3 and last season’s beaten finalist Riley Parsons 5-1.
The result also earned the budding star from Stoke Snooker Club an invitation to next year’s European Under-17 Championship in Malta.
“I struggled through it,” he said. “I didn’t play amazing but I managed to get through it.
“It was a good day, though, and I’m looking forward to the final and Malta next year.”
Lloyd is ranked 26th on the EASB Premier Junior Tour, for the best 49 under-21s in the country. Harris is third on one of the feeder circuits, the EASB Regional Junior Tour Midlands.
He has progressed rapidly through every junior level on the Cuestars South of England Under-21 circuit but lost top spot on the Gold Tour as the sixth leg at Chandler’s Ford clashed with his national commitments.
Meanwhile, Jonny Mutch, who is sixth on the Gold Tour, lost 4-1 to 14-year-old Parsons (Cannock, Staffs) in the “bear pit” of the Paul Hunter Matchroom.
But the 15-year-old, based at Cambridge Snooker Centre, demonstrated he can compete at this level as there was little difference between the players.
Trailing 1-0, Mutch went ‘in-off’ the frame-ball brown in the second frame but did pull one back on the black in the next. He lost the fourth on the final two colours and missed a straightforward black with the reds open in the final frame.
Dad Adrian said: “I was impressed. He played great. It was a great experience all round.
“He is steaming to compete again and he will rise to much greater things.”
Report and picture by Tim Dunkley.