English Disability Snooker Champions Crowned in Leeds
English Partnership for Snooker & Billiards (EPSB) staged the second English Disability Snooker Championship in Leeds last weekend which saw winners earning titles across six classification groups.
A total of 42 players contested the second staging of the event at the Northern Snooker Centre with recently-crowned world champions Carl Gibson and James Hart among the line-up in West Yorkshire.
The event was supported by the World Disability Billiards & Snooker (WDBS) and you can read about how the action unfolded below.
Trio Defend Titles
Carl Gibson, Reece Matin and Gary Taylor each successfully defended the English Disability Snooker Championship title on Sunday.
Two-time world champion Gibson was the dominant force in the ambulant Group 4 despite forgetting to bring his own cue to the Northern Snooker Centre on Sunday.
The 54-year-old had won his three group matches without dropping a frame and was able to defeat Lee Overton on the final black in the semi-finals while playing with a borrowed cue.
Nigel Brasier awaited in the final following an impressive weekend that saw him register four consecutive whitewash wins. Gibson once again proved to be unstoppable, however, as he ran out a 3-0 victor on the Paul Hunter match table to retain his national crown.
In Group 6B, Matin marked one year since an unforgettable debut by incredibly winning the title without dropping a frame for the second successive year.
The 23-year-old, who is the reigning WDBS UK Championship and Hull Open champion, topped his group before defeating Will Clements-Nauman, Lee Hague and finally Christopher Goldsworthy by a 3-0 winning margin to secure the winner’s trophy.
There was also a successful title retention in the combined visual and deaf classification group as Gary Taylor lifted the title once again.
Competing in a disability event for the first time this year, Taylor dropped just a single frame in the group stage and then overcame Paul Smith in the semi-finals to set up a title match meeting with Mike Gillespie.
Each frame of the final was closely contested but it was Taylor who managed to win all three of them to get over the line.
Maiden Crowns for Swift, Bolton and Crookes
Gary Swift, Dave Bolton and Dominic Crookes won the national championship crown for the first time in Groups 1+2, 3+5 and 6A.
Swift, the 2025 world champion, took full advantage of the absence of both defending champion Tony Southern and WDBS world number one Dave Beaumont to win the wheelchair event.
The 55-year-old topped his group with a clean sweep of victories before beating Matthew Lester 2-0 in the semi-finals.
Local rival Jerry McFarlane, who plays in the same club as Swift, was his opponent in a title match that went the distance before the eventual champion was able to gain victory in the decider by a 65-22 scoreline.
Group 5’s world number one Bolton was able to add another trophy to his ever-growing cabinet as he won through the combined ambulant Group 3+5 competition.
Bolton did not drop a frame across the weekend, coming out on top in the battle of the world number ones against Peter Hull in the semi-finals before defeating Kal Mattu 3-0 to complete the title win.
Reigning WDBS Hull Open champion Crookes denied defending champion Robert Cooper in an epic Group 6A final that went all the way.
Crookes had dropped just a single frame prior to the final, notably against Cooper in the group stages, and he beat Liam Crook 2-0 in the semi-finals to set up a rematch in the final.
Cooper twice led the best-of-five frame contest but he was unable to seal the victory and it was Crookes who forced a decider before taking frame five to win his maiden English national championship.
There was also a new winner in the Challenge Cup, an event for players who failed to advance from the group stages on Saturday, as Group 7’s David Baker defeated James Lodge in the final.
