THE final of the Sansom Cup was played on the excellent Upton Victory Hall green on Saturday, between Gladstone and New Brighton Quarry Vikings.

The New Brighton team must have been hoping that they could reproduce the brilliant form they showed in the semi-final when they beat the powerful Tixall squad.

But although they had six winners, the best being a 21-06 win for Paul Saville, and led with just two games to play, single figure wins for Jon Ellis (21-07) and Nick Burridge (21-05) swung things around for Gladstone.

At the end Gladstone were the winners of a friendly but competitive match by 10 shots and deservedly took the trophy.

The same green had been used by the ladies the previous day for the final of the Ladies Rose Bowl.

The winners of this match, and the trophy, were Manor Road Ladies who beat Lairds Ladies in another close final.

Lairds Ladies had to battle to overcome a handicap deficit of 60 and, on the day, this proved to be just beyond their reach. Manor Road were the winners by 234-222.

The best performance by the ladies of Manor Road was a tremendous 21-08 win for Denise Pike and for Lairds Joan Dewhurst's 21-04 win was their best score.

The Merseyside CGBA Veterans Championship, the Jim Parry Tournament, was held at Heswall RBL on Friday afternoon and the winner after some exciting games was Liverpool's (Kings 2000) John Hignett Snr. who beat Tixall's Brian Somerville in the final.

Hignett played very well throughout the afternoon and thoroughly deserved his win.

In the quarters he was too consistent for last year's winner of the trophy, another Liverpool player, Don Aldridge, and he then beat Tom Bentley.

Somerville had three one sided victories to reach the final; he was too good for Peter Smith in the quarters and then he had another big win over Upton's Tony Cavanagh.

In the final, Hignett quickly took a 12-04 lead  before being pegged back to 13 across, The final end could have gone either way but Hignett took the two points to clinch the title.

Results:

Quarter-finals: J Hignett Snr 15, D Aldridge 11; T Bentley 15, T Tsang 13; T Cavanagh 15, P Webster 13; B Somerville 15, P Smith 07.

Semi-finals: Hignett 15, Bentley 06; Somerville 15, Cavanagh 04.

Final: Hignett 15, Somerville 13.

The two winners of the Charles Stephens Tixall Junior Classic were Adam Pennington in the under 18 section and Zoe Stratton in the under 14 section.

Results:

Under-18 section:  Semi-finals: Josh Bunting 21, Kieron Ivers 10, Adam Pennington 21, Liam Rhodes 08.

Final: Pennington 21, Rhodes 08.

Under-14 section:  Semi-finals: Zoe Stratton 21, Jake McElnay 12, Daniel Hazlehurst 21, Mark Wood 16. 

Final: Stratton 21, Hazlehurst 06.

It is good news that the future of this event has been guaranteed by the sponsors for at least the next five years.