Snooker Championship League (group 2) - Three names, the same place

Ronnie`s recovered from the UK Championship early exist

Some really nice matches happened yesterday as Group 2 started its run. Seven players, four of them being "old friends" from Group 1, did their best to earn as many points as possible so today they will be able to secure a place in the play-offs. For many of them yesterday was a very prolific day, while for the others ... well, not a very good one.


Three great names of the snooker business have "graduated" top of their group :-P with a total of 3 points : Ronnie O`Sullivan, John Higgins and Mark Williams. True, for Higgins and O`Sullivan the victory was a total one, because they won three out of three matches, while Williams won only three out of four, but in the end all of them succeeded in closing the day in advantage.

Higgins rocking around the snooker table

 Ronnie’s performance was an outstanding one. Why? Well, because he is a wonderful player and because when he wants it…he delivers some really top class snooker! :-) He crashed the current world champion, Neil Robertson 3-0 and Jamie Cope by the same scoreline, while ending his day with a very tight battle against "The Magician" Murphy 3-2. In this last match “The Rocket" hit a 113 and a 138, the second one meaning also the highest break of this group so far.
"The Wizard of Wishaw" continued his great run, started back in group 1, as he defeated all his opponents scoring 3-1 against Ali Carter, 3-2 against Mark Williams (great match!) and another 3-2 result playing Shaun Murphy.


Mark Williams was on fire yesterday as he whitewashed Jamie Cope and Shaun Murphy 3-0 and won 3-1 over "The Captain" Carter and if he keeps up this wonderful performance he has a guaranteed place into the semis.

"The Welsh Potting Machine" is back in business

Surprisingly Neil Robertson and Ali Carter were not at their best, both of them winning only one match out of three. Robbo succeeded to come back from being lead 2-0 by Jamie Cope and took over the next three frames to end on a final result of 3-2, but lost 3-0 to O`Sullivan and 3-2 to Shaun Murphy. As for Carter he was pretty gutted for at the beginning of the day he lost 3-1 to Higgins, but put himself together to crash Jamie Cope 3-0 later that day. Still he wasn’t able to maintain that form and saw himself put in the corner when he lost 3-1 to the "Welsh Potting Machine".
But no one had a worse day like poor Jamie Cope had! He didn’t win any matches and he’s without any doubt out of the group. Such a shame, as he is a very good snooker player :-(


But the show must go on, as the song says, so today the final battle will be staged in the town of Essex, as the seven snooker boys will try and make it to the "Winners` group". Who is going to follow Selby’s footsteps and get a place into the next round and who’s going to team up with the boys from Group 3? Well, well...we shall have to wait and see... ;-)


Table 1 (all times are approximate)


Table 2 (all times are approximate)
*all hours are UK time


Good luck to the boys and see you tomorrow! :-)