Australian Goldfields Open qualifiers 2011 (the last two days) - Who's going to Australia?

McLeod v. Ebbo, a match to look forward to

The last two days of the Australian Goldfields Open qualifiers have been a genuine battle of cues and I think the fact that this event is a ranking one, had to do a lot with it. However, I was very pleased to see the players that didn't have such a tremendous run last season making a pretty good start and succeeding to book a flight ticket to Australia for the coming month.


Wednesday saw the two Jimmy's of the competition being defeated, White experiencing a 5-3 scoreline from Rory McLeod, while Robertson was eliminated by Mark Joyce by the same result. It's been said a lot about Rory McLeod this last two days, mainly because the guy seemed to refuse to shake the hand of the referee because she's a woman and he's a Muslim ... and you get the picture. Hm ... that's my whole comment to this issue, because religion and foreign customs are too delicate to discuss. Period!
Buuuuuuut the funniest thing ever and what do you know? It has McLeod's "touch" in it also, is that after beating Robert Milkins 5-2 on Thursday and qualifying for the event in Australia, he will play his fist match against Peter Ebdon. Well, isn’t that something! Prepare yourselves a fluffy pillow from today! :-)))

These shoes are made for waking

So, with one legend being defeated (I'm taking about "the Whirlwind, of course) and Steve Davis pulling out of the competition for "personal reasons", it came to the "darling of Dublin", Ken Doherty. And the man delivered and delivered big time. He succeeded to beat Scott MacKenzie 5-2 in order to set his fist Australian Goldfields Open 2011 match with Stephen Maguire.
Good, old Dave Harold put up with a tremendous and tight battle against the brave and determined Dave Gilbert, but lost the decider, the winner cashing one more victory before embarking into the place to Australia, beating Mark King 5-0.


Barry Pinches is definitely on fire! Yes, sir. The man had had a very good run and managed to book himself a place for the main event by winning 5-3 over Matthew Couch and Stephen Lee.
Being a bit unlucky in the end, the other Barry of this competition, Barry Hawkins saw himself losing the final battle (aka. the decider) in front of the mighty 007 Agent, Nigel Bong. Actually, this was the match that marked the end of the qualifiers because it was the one that kept us awake, biting our nails, to see a final score of 79-69.Got to give it to Nigel, he is one tough lad ;-)

Barry Pinches

If the Chinese army started the qualifying rounds in great form, as the days were passing by they were defeated, in the end only one of them being able to resist the test of time. Well, maybe the expression is not very fortunate, since the player I'm talking about had only one match to play, but you get the idea. Liang Wenbo is the man that will be flying to Australia with the whole gang, as he beat Ben Woollaston 5-3, his fellow-country Tian Pengfei flying also, but to China, as he sadly lost the decider against Mark Davis, while Yu Delu was crashed by Ryan Day 5-0.


So, let's see: who's going to Australia to play along with the Top 16 players and some strategically picked wild cards? Here is the list:




The complete list of results can be checked here.


So, all things are set to go to Australia by the end of July. Oh, and just so you know Dave Hendon announced that EuroSport will broadcast the entire event plus the highlights of the day (considering the time-line difference).
The Australian Goldfields Open runs from 18 - 24 of July in the beautiful city of Bendigo, Victoria.