High Flying Pete Displays All His Skills At Eyre Show

Stanley Street 'A's Peter Eyre has once again been crowned Hard Bat champion as he defended his Hard Bat title in great style. The Hard Bat competition which has now become the curtain raiser to the league season was held at the Worksop Leisure Centre with 16 players entering the competition who were all ranked in order of ability and split into four groups.
Group A threw up probably the biggest surprise of the night as number one seed Richard Element and Rob Vaughan had both won their opening two group matches against Ben Swain and James Wormwell when they met for their final group game against each other. Element who had been tipped to win the competition lost out to Vaughan 31-30 to leave himself runner up in the group but still qualifying for the quarter finals but if Group B went to form then he would be up against previous winner and hard bat specialist Peter Eyre.
Eyre duly topped Group B with three comfortable wins over Jim Westwood, Erlands Skels and Jeff Reay with Westwood joining him in the quarter finals after finishing runner up with two fine wins over Skels and Reay.
If Groups A and B were pretty conclusive as to who got through to the quarter finals then Groups C and D were anything but.
Three players in Group C had all finished on two wins each and so were level on points. Adam Hamilton, Ralph Rodda and 2012 winner Jack Kirkland had all beaten Graham Stent but then Hamilton had beaten Kirkland, Kirkland had beaten Rodda and then Rodda had beaten Hamilton which all meant that points difference would come into play. Hamilton topped the group as he finished on +19 with Rodda making it through to the next round by virtue of finishing on +15 to Kirkland's +7.
Group D replicated Group C exactly with three players again finishing with two wins each. Nigel Stent, Tony Swain and Andy Kirkland had all defeated Dave Lee but then all lost one game against each other. Stent beat Swain 31-26 but then lost to Kirkland 31-27 before Swain then beat Kirkland 31-23 to yet again leave a group to be decided on points difference. Swain finished top on +24 with Stent finishing runner up on +19 with Kirkland being the player to miss out by finishing on +7.
The first of the quarter finals saw Rob Vaughan comfortably beat Jim Westwood 31-12 with Ralph Rodda dispatching Tony Swain almost as comfortably running out a 31-17 winner.
The one quarter final that everyone was looking forward to seeing was number one seed Richard Element against Peter Eyre with a close contest expected by all but it was not to be as Eyre got the better of Element winning 31-13.
If the first three quarter finals lacked a bit of drama then the fourth one certainly made up for it! Club team mates Nigel Stent and Adam Hamilton were involved in a right old battle from start to finish. Hamilton had built a very handy lead but Stent wasn't finished and he managed to claw his way back into the match and level the contest at 30 points all and with no deuce in the Hard Bat competition the next point would decide the winner and when Hamilton went for a big hit that didn't quite come off it left Stent to go through to the semi finals.
The first semi final went the way of Peter Eyre as he unsurprisingly defeated a plucky Ralph Rodda 31-14 but Rodda can be more than pleased with his efforts making the semi finals in what was what a strong entry list of players.
In the second semi final Rob Vaughan continued his run of surprising form as he upset the odds once again by beating number four seed Nigel Stent in what turned out to be a comfortable win in the end as he made it through to the final with a 31-16 scoreline.
Vaughan managed to take his surprising form into the Final and somehow got himself a very useful 18-10 lead but Eyre wasn't done and he slowly but surely started to close the deficit and managed to level the contest at 25-25 and then showed his class by deservedly going on to claim the title by winning 31-27