Welsh Snooker Pair Win European Masters Title

Gary Baker on 06/03/2007

Welsh Snooker president, Darren Morgan, has proved he can still pot a few balls in serious competition after retiring from the professional circuit and taking to the veterans competitions like a duck to water.

Morgan once reached the Embassy World Championships semi-finals at the iconic Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, and rose to become number eight on the world rankings during his great career on the main pro tour that included terrific matches against people like Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis.
Now, as he combines running his own snooker club in Cross Keys with property development, the former Benson and Hedges Irish Masters champion is finding a second lease of snooker life as an amateur. And that has resulted in him winning a major title, the European Masters Over-40 Team Championships, with partner Gerald Brain over in Ghent (Belgium) on Friday after a solid week of competition.

Sixteen different countries entered the event, with twenty teams taking part altogether. The competition began in and round robin format with five teams in each of the four groups. The top two went through to the quarter-finals, with Morgan, who is used to team competition after captaining Wales to Nations Cup victory in 1998, and Brain finishing first in their group with three wins and a draw. In all, they lost just six out of 32 frames and went on to beat Northern Ireland by an emphatic seven frames to two before another couple of big wins against defending champions England in the semis by a 7-3 scoreline, and against Malta by the same score in the final.
It was also a red letter week for Bargoed club player Brain as it was his first Welsh international waistcoat after 25 years of trying. Morgan said: "I was so pleased for him and he played his part in having 32 frames and winning 19 of them. I managed to play 29 frames and won 28 of them, which I was very pleased with. I had 19 breaks of 50 and over, which consisted of five breaks of over 80, three over 90 and four centuries. That included a 137 break and a 140, the latter was the highest break of the tournament."

The Welsh senior team, comprising Gareth Coppack, Daniel Wells and David John, also played in Ghent and, after topping their own group, they went out in the quarter-finals.

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