The new Interleague Season will be starting on the 18th February 2011. Stafford Sunday will now be competing in the Elite division after being promoted from the Premier section. Stafford Blaze will be competing in the Premier division. Stafford Blaze will hope to challenge this season with their experience and established side. Stafford Sunday will have to raise their game as they pit their skills against very strong opposition such as TTA, TTB, Cannock, Leek A and Afford.

Two teams gained victories over higher division opposition in the 1st round of the Stan Bent Team ko. Rickerscote C from the 3rd div defeated 2nd div St. Georges B 4-2. Brian Lycett (2), Dave Ashton and Les Murphy were the victors on the night. 3rd div Perkins Social also achieved the same score over 2nd div Rangers Social. James Devlin (2), Rob Harris and Warren Bradbury all won. Staffs Bull L put their poor league form to one side after they ran out 4-3 winners over fellow 1st div side Rileys. 2010 holders Rileys Cue came through with a comfortable 4-0 win over 3rd div Metro Bar. Both Bear & Pheasant sides also recorded 4-0 victories over the Joiners and Rileys Rockets. To See more results from the 1st Round click on the Knockouts link.

All of the 2010/11 Winter League fixtures are now available. The Winter League continues to operate with three divisions. Divisions 1 and 2 each contain 11 teams whilst 10 teams will play in Division 3. The consequence of this is that there will be fixture byes in all divisions. One team will have a bye every League Sunday in the top two divisions. Two teams will have a bye in the 3rd division on League Sundays with the exception of 2 dates (14th November and 27th February) when all 10 teams have a fixture. This is in order to start and finish all 3 divisions on the same dates.

Rileys Cue are the 2010 Summer Knockout Champions after coming back to beat Rileys Rebels 4-2 in the final.

Frame 1 saw Rob Wharne (Cue) take control against John Grobnik after pushing the black near to a pocket that he had covered. But a rare miscue by Rob when going for game let John back into the game and, after a tactical battle on the few remaining balls, it was the Rebels player who eventually sank the black.

Dave Baker's (Rebels) attempted dish from the break in the 2nd frame fell just short after he jawed a very fine cut on his last red to the middle pocket. Martin Priestley stepped up for the Cue men but missed an awkward pot that left Dave a shot on his ball. He duly dropped it in the middle and the black followed to put the Rebels into a 2-0 lead.

Pressure was now on the defending champions as Dave Barker (Cue) broke off in the 3rd frame. The balls scattered but nothing dropped. However, the white ball had found a safe place on the table leaving Alan Simm no option but to take on a very difficult combination shot which failed. Dave now had a finish on and, slowly but surely, cleared the table in his next visit.

The final frame before the interval saw age versus youth as Kev Brown (Cue) attempted to level the match score while Sean Alldritt (Rebels) was hoping to give his team a 3-1 lead. Kev had the first chance to seal the frame but jawed a tricky black. This allowed Sean to establish a footing and he progressed to have a shot on the black. But fear of a possible in-off caused him to not only miss the shot but also pot the cue ball, leaving Kev an easy black to level the match score at 2-2.

The Rileys Cue captain, Mike Barker, tackled Gaz Baker in a 5th frame that saw Gaz establish control of the table by covering 2 corner pockets whilst Mike was trying to protect the black ball. Eventually, Gaz saw a possible finish on but missed a relatively easy pot on his penultimate colour. This forced Mike to go game earlier than he probably would have liked but he held himself together and took out a top finish to put his team into the lead for the first time.

Frame 6 saw a rematch of the first frame as John Grobnik (Rebels) looked to make it a double over Rob Wharne and force a last frame decider. As in their earlier frame it was John who had the first opportunity to claim the win but he fell just short as his final colour skimmed the middle pocket. After a short exchange of shots it was Rob who claimed the victory and sealed a 4-2 victory for the Rileys Cue.

The win saw the Rileys Cue team claim a clean sweep for 2010 adding the Summer League title to victories in the previous Winter League and Stan Bent Trophy.

Rileys Cue Ts are the Summer Plate Knockout Champions after a convincing 4-1 victory over Albion in the final.

Ainoa Villar (Cue Ts) set the ball rolling with a win over Dan Moore (Albion). Cue Ts captain, Clair Maslin, should have made it 2-0 but followed the black in with the white ball to present the game to Dan Hibbs. A win in the 3rd frame for Russ Pibworth (Cue Ts) over Ant Varkulys (Albion) restored the lead to the Cue Ts. Back-to-back wins for Steve Finney over Dean Marley and Dan Moore in the 4th and 5th frames secured the win for the Cue Ts.

Stafford Sunday's final match of the Inter-league season has been re-arranged for the Friday before because of a clash with the Stafford Sunday Pool Presentation Evening. So, Stafford Sunday will now play Just Power Plus Crompos on Friday 12th November.

Only one proposal was voted in at the 2010 Annual General Meeting held at Rangers Social Club.

8-Balls can now be marked on the score card by the name of the non-breaking player as long as a) the break is dry (no balls are potted), b) the break is legal (minimum of 4 balls strike a cushion and the cue-ball stays on the table) and c) the non-breaking player clears the table in one visit.

All existing officers and committee members were happy to continue in their current roles. A place on the committee was offered to the floor but there were no takers.

Parkside Electrical continue to sponsor the League.

All teams were encouraged to use the online match card for the upcoming Winter League.

The Knockout stages of the Summer League start on 24th October with the quarter-finals of the Summer Ko and the Summer Plate. The semi-final draw will be made on 24th October with the matches to be played on 31st October at neutral venues. The final to be played on 7th November at Rileys.

Rob Wharne of Rileys Cue has claimed the title of National Amateur champion at the recent tournament held at Great Yarmouth.

A field of 340 players from all corners of the UK gathered with the hope of claiming the prestigious title. Rob knew better than many what it takes to win the title after falling at the final hurdle 3 years ago in a controversial final that saw former world champion and professional player, Carl Morris, claim the title.

But, Rob made sure this year with a devastating run of victories that saw him progress through a strong field with no opponent coming close to victory in any of his matches. Wins in the last 16 stage over Lee Barwell, Tem Dixon (quarter-final) and Mark White (semi-final) saw Rob make it into the final.

Fellow IPA Tour player, Karl Sutton, faced Rob in the final and it was Karl who settled down the quickest, storming into a 5-1 lead. Two long range black ball pots then saw Rob establish a footing in the match and bring some confidence back into his game. From that point on he never looked back as he claimed frame after frame, many in one visit, and blew his opponent away to the extent that when Karl rarely made it to the table he was under so much pressure that his game crumbled. The comeback was completed as Rob potted the black in the 13th frame to win the match 8-5.

QUALIFICATION FOR THE SUMMER MAIN / PLATE DRAWS.

For the SUMMER MAIN KNOCKOUT. 4 BEST GROUP WINNERS receive home advantage in the Quarter Finals. The remaining GROUP WINNER plus the 3 BEST RUNNERS UP will be drawn against them.

For the SUMMER PLATE KNOCKOUT. The 2 Remaining RUNNERS UP plus the 2 BEST 3RD place teams receive home advantage in the Quarter Finals. The 3 remaining 3rd place teams and best 4th placed team will be drawn against them.

As Group A plays more games than the remaining groups, qualification will be based on average points per game for all groups. Also Group E has a team which withdrew so those results will be deducted at the end of the campaign and will be based on 6 games played.

Stafford Sunday were well beaten in their recent Interleague top-of-the-table clash at home to Afford Baize. The spoils were shared during the first 8 frames before the away team claimed the 9th rack to go into the interval leading by one frame. Mike Barker, Gaz Baker, Dave Barker and Mick Addison were the first half winners on the Stafford side. The 2nd half started well as Alan Simm turned around a very tough situation in his game with the help of some luck. Unfortunately, there was only one other success for the home team after the interval and that was claimed by Tom Tonna. The 12-6 defeat puts a big dent in Stafford Sunday's hopes of promotion to the top table.

Stafford Blaze shared the spoils on their trip to Crompos, coming away with a 9-9 draw.

ALL CURRENT AND NEW TEAMS ARE INVITED TO ATTEND THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (AGM) WHICH IS BEING HELD @ RANGERS CLUB ON SUNDAY 17TH OCTOBER 2010.

ANY ISSUES OR PROPOSALS MUST BE EMAILED TO THE LEAGUE SECRETARY BY NO LATER THAN 3RD OCTOBER 2010. NO PROPOSALS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER THIS DATE AND WILL NOT ALLOWED FOR DEBATE ON THE NIGHT OF THE MEETING.

ALL CAPTAINS PLEASE NOTE THAT ONLY ONE VOTE PER TEAM IS COUNTED ON THE NIGHT.

This year's POOL PRESENTATION EVENING will be held at the Rangers Social Club on Friday 19th November 2010. The event will be shared with the Tuesday Pool League and will include live entertainment featuring local band emotiv. Proceedings will kick off at 8pm.

Stafford Sunday made hard work of their recent league match away at Just Power Plus Baize. Wins for Mike Barker, Alan Simm, Steve Finney, Kev Brown and Tom Tonna gave the Stafford side a perfect start and a 5-0 lead. But some missed chances in the next 4 frames presented the home side with a way back into the match and they duly obliged to go into the interval trailing 5-4.

Second wins on the night for Kev and Steve (break and dish) took the Stafford boys to 7-4 at the start of the second half. There were subsequent wins for Mick Addison and Gaz Baker in between frames going to players in the Stoke team. With two frames to play, the score stood at 9-7 to Stafford with Simon Key and Dave Barker hoping to secure victory for the team and, after some nervous tactical battles, they both delivered wins to leave the final scoreline at 11-7 to Stafford Sunday.

The victory keeps Stafford Sunday in joint top place with Afford Baize in the Premier League and nicely sets up their clash at Stafford Rileys next month with both teams eyeing up the one promotion place on offer.

You may have noticed some enhancements to the look and feel of the website over recent weeks. Some of these changes are listed below:

• the top horizontal menu now has drop-down lists of options added to some items to speed up access to pages
• the Knockout Rounds page has clickable rows (best viewed with Javascript running) to view further details of each round as well as a new Draw Sheet that displays the whole tournament from 1st to final round on one page
• the Summer League pages (Fixtures, Results, Tables, Averages and 8-Balls) also make use of clickable rows where appropriate as well as providing statistics at team, match and player level
• individual frame results for a match, eg Rileys Rebels vs Bear and Pheasant A, can be viewed by clicking on a match in the Results page
• the lists of Fixtures and Results can be limited to a certain Team or Match Date
• the Teams item on the left-hand vertical menu contains pages to view the lists of Teams, Venues and Players participating in the current season (Summer League)
• the data in the Teams, Players and Averages pages can be re-sorted by clicking on one of the underlined column headings
• the new online Match Card allows the result of recently played team matches (league and cup) to be sent to the League Secretary without delay

The Winter League sections of the website will be re-styled in a similar manner once the Summer League has finished.