2023 PowerGlide English Under-14 Championship | Stage Two here we come!

In September we announced the return of the English Under-14 Championship – this season sponsored by PowerGlide Cues.

Now, following three months of exciting club-based events, the qualifiers have emerged for the next stage of the competition.

The Story so far…

Stage One has involved 14 EPSB-affiliated clubs around the country running a qualifying event for the Under-14 age group.  These have predominantly seen WPBSA Snooker Coaches directing club-based qualifiers with their regular junior snooker groups.

A huge tally of 163 players have taken part – a record for the Championship in its contemporary format – many engaging in a competitive event for the first time.

The competition has continued to expand the involvement of clubs across England, as well as players from a wide variety of ability levels, backgrounds, ages and genders.

The Championship now moves to a north and south event to decide who goes through to the national final later this season.

Stage Two

A total of 40 qualifying players will take part in Stage Two.

These will comprise of the winners and runners-up from each club event, with additional wild card entries from the most entered Stage One events on an ascending scale.

The venue for Stage Two North will be QBar Walsall Wood.

The venue for Stage Two South will be Woking Snooker Centre.

Both events will take place on Saturday 11 March, starting at 10.30am.

The north and south region has been split to balance total entries from each region.

Qualifying players

As stated, each club was guaranteed two qualifying players for Stage Two.  In addition, a number of clubs have been awarded additional qualifiers, based on entries into their Stage One event.  The qualifiers for each club is as follows:

North Region:

Breakers Snooker Club, Leicester (Faiz Majid, Yashnai Parmar)

QBar, Walsall Wood (George Woodhouse, Jon James Stackhouse, Bobby Moore, Thomas Woods, Archie Buskin, Oscar Newton)

Elite Snooker Club, Preston (Jack Wilding, Jackson Pope)

Mill Brow Snooker & Social Club, Widnes (James Bradley, Ethan Hornigold)

Hollins Grove Conservative Club, Blackburn (Arik Kadir, Harrison Hannan, Jayden Pickup, Harrison Whittle)

Northern Snooker Centre, Leeds (Shaun Liu, Niall Harrison, Dominykas Vaiksnoras, Ethan Robertson)

South Region:

Stratford Sports Club, Stratford-upon-Avon (Nicholas Ayres, Freddie Gardner)

Woodside Snooker Centre, Dereham (William Chambers, Riley Harlow)

Salisbury Snooker Club (Ellise Scott, Thomas Mcevoy)

Chandlers Ford Snooker Club, Eastleigh (Ryan Spratt, William Thomson, Asten Sahota, Christopher Woodward)

Castle Snooker Club, Brighton (Harry Wyatt, Adam Abbas)

Cousins Professional Snooker and Pool Club, London (William Hurley, Jamie Hogg)

Waterlooville Sports Bar (Dylan Beer, Caden Read)

Frames Sports Bar, Coulsdon (Zain Jeraj, Ayan Roy, Ronnie Bunker, Daniel Mcgowan)

Vladislav Gradinari won the 2022 Championship

Format

There will be 20 players in each area. These players will be divided into four round robin groups of five. The draw will be completed and published on snookerscores.net at least a week before the event.

It is planned that event winners will be seeded (no more than two event winners in a group) and players from the same qualifying event will be kept apart in the group phase (where possible).

After everyone in the group has played each other, the top two from each group will go through to the knockouts where there will be quarter-finals, semi-finals and an area final.

The winner of the area final will go through to the grand final and play against the other area winner at Landywood Snooker Club (near Walsall) on Sunday 2nd April.

All matches at the area events (both group and knockout) will be the best of three frames.

The grand final at Landywood will be the best of seven frames.

The miss rule will not be in operation for Stage Two, but it will be used for the grand final in April.

Dress Code

There is a dress code for Stage Two players which consists a minimum of:

• Formal shoes (no trainers/sneakers etc.)
• Formal trousers (no jeans/cargos etc.)
• Smart and approapriate collared shirt or polo shirt (can be either long or short sleeved)

Next Steps

The EPSB will be in contact with the relevant clubs and selected players to ensure they have full details of the Stage Two events.