Snooker: Van Hove Does The Double

After an extremly classy show of solid match snooker, Kevin Van Hove from Belgium has won the European Snooker Championships in Carlow to go with his previous victory in the International Open tour card playoff. On his route to the title Kevin overcame Thomas McSorley, Gary Thomson, Brendan O'Donoghue, Vincent Muldoon and finally Rodney Goggins, who, thanks to Kevin already securing his tour card the week before, will now take up another of the tour card places available for the 2007/8 professional season.

Both men played fantastic snooker over the whole two week period and thoroughly deserve their tour cards. We wish them all the luck in the world on the main tour and hope to see them on TV soon after the start of the new season.


On a more unfortunate note, spare a thought for Bjorn Haneveer who has yet again narrowly missed claiming a tour card by the narrowest of margins. Losing 6-5 to Rodney Goggins in the semi-final, it is another case of so near and yet so far for Bjorn, who narrowly missed collecting his card through the Pontins Internation Open Series despite winning one of the events!
We wish Bjorn all the best in the coming season and hope that he can finally secure his place back on the main tour.

Congratulations also on some great performances in reaching the quarter finals go to Lasse Munstermann, vincent Muldoon, Brendan O'Donaghue, Tom Gleeson and Martin Mc Crudden.

The tournament was a fantastic success yet again, so congratulations also go to the organisers and the table fitters for preparing the tables and the tournament which ran smoothly and without a hitch over the two weeks. I personally enjoyed myself hugely and will be looking forward to having another pop at the big european amateurs again next year.

Results:

1st - Kevin Van Hove

2nd - Rodney Goggins

3rd - Bjorn Haneveer
- Vincent Muldoon

5th - Lasse Munsterman
- Brendan O'Donoghue
- Tom Gleeson
- Martin Mc Crudden

9th - Sacha Lippe
- Simon Zammit
- Yvan van Velthoven
- Robert Murphy
- Gary Thomson
- Jordan Brown
- David Mills
- Jonathon Nelson