Snooker and Billiards: Bradford made a fine start to both Yorkshire Inter-District League matches at Thorne, but they proved false dawns.

The billiards team led 2-0, but lost 5-2, while the snooker team were 3-0 up, but could only draw 3-3, having had a match ball in the fifth frame.

Alan Firth trailed Tom Hodby 59-40 in the billiards, but hit back with efforts of 33 and 43 to triumph 200-155.

Paul Devitt's 40 was outweighed by Mick Andrew's 77 and he was beaten 200-134 while Richard Lodge could not hold on to a 151-76 lead in the decider against Bill Palmer.

Lodge had sprinted ahead with a 33 and a 41, but it all went wrong in the latter stages, Palmer hitting back with 39 and 34 unfinished to pip him at the post 200-196 as Thorne won 5-2.

Wayne Cooper gave Bradford a cracking start in the snooker, defeating Eugene Murphy 80-36, 43-18, and Kevin Firth took his opener 60-25 against Shaun Hennessy to make it 3-0.

The Thorne man took the next 61-30, but Matthew Holt missed frame-ball black when trailing 42-38 in his opener against Shaun Whittles.

The home player then sank it to reduce the advantage to 3-2, and took the last 53-19 to force the draw.

There are only four past champions in the draw for the Bradford Snooker Championship, and two of them - Shab Ditta (Cuedos) and Brian Mullaney (Lilycroft WMC) - meet in the second round.

Of the others, Sajid Khan (Top Cues) faces Andy Papiacovou (Cuedos), and holder Wayne Cooper (Cue-dos) plays Paul Denny (Wibsey Liberals).

Matches in both this event and the G&S Precision Engineering Bradford Snooker pairs Championship must be completed by January 10.

Clubhouse In Cue Gardens member Craig Butler is the leading West York-shire player in the UK Tour Order of Merit after two events.

The Bramley man is 17th equal on 532 points. Peter Lines (Leeds) is 24th equal on 448 and Birstall's Jason Prince 36th equal on 400.

Other placings include: 60= Malcolm Bilclough (Leeds) 336pts, 121= Simon Bedford (Bradford), Paul Cavney (Rawdon), Steve Prest (Leeds) 252, 301= Wayne Cooper (Bradford), Anthony Massey (Esholt), Stephen Taylor (Dewsbury) 192, 356= Jon Bagley (Leeds) 181, 394= Rashid Ali (Bradford), Waheed Khan (Bradford), Tony Wood (Bradford) 170, 448= Ian Williamson (Leeds) 96.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.