RAYMOND Fry and Sean Gray have joined Patrick Wallace and Declan Lavery to complete the semi-final line-up for the opening ranking event of the NIBSA season at the Antrim Sports Club.
The tournament will be played to a finish this Sunday, with Dungannon man Wallace taking on Lavery, and Fry facing Gray over the best of seven frames at 11am. The decider, over the best of nine, will follow at 3pm.
Gray had the smoothest passage of the four. On Saturday past, he dropped just two frames in his four matches, with Fergal Quinn (3-0) and Declan Hughes (4-1) notable scalps for the Ballycastle veteran.
Coalisland’s Quinn and Armagh man Hughes did lead the way in the break-building stakes on the day with two centuries each, the former compiling runs of 106 and 103 and the latter two breaks of 111.
Gray made it on to the breaks board with runs of 64, 60 and 59, while underage kingpin Joel Connolly, who lost 3-0 to Hughes in the last 16, weighed in with 91 and 67 in 3-0 wins over Alan McDonald and Paul Campbell.
The other three semi-finalists were all given stern tests at some stage of their progress, with Fry, from the host club, needing to win a quarter-final decider against Magherafelt’s Brian Milne (4-3) on Sunday past after 3-0 wins over Conor McWilliams, Paul Lowry and Stephen McGurn.
Belfast’s Mark Jackson produced the top break of the day, a 94, while Fry had five 50-plus visits – 81, 66, 58, 55 and 52.
Fry’s club-mate Lavery had come through a highly competitive second quarter the previous Sunday, but it was far from plain sailing for him either.
After 3-0 wins over Belfast’s Brendan Coiley and NI U16 champion Ryan Dornan, he was taken to a decider (3-2) by Paul Lindsay in the last 16 before beating Joe Meara 4-2 in the last eight. He recored four half-centuries along the way – 86, 79, 69 and 60.
Meara, whose top breaks of the day were 69 and 65, had earlier claimed the scalp of current Northern Ireland champion Darren Dornan in a deciding frame (3-2). The Loughinisland man was the day’s heaviest scorer with runs of 71, 70, 70, 53 and 53 over the course of a 3-0 win over Taylor McCabe and that slender loss to Meara.
Wallace, meanwhile, had been given a fright the previous day by Drumaness man Hugh Murdock, the NIBSA number one edging home 3-2 in the last 16 before beating Northern Ireland Championship runner-up Ryan McQuillan 4-1 to reach the semis.
Wallace’s top runs were 75, 73 and 59, while Shea Moore, who lost 3-1 to Wallace, topped the breaks board with a 77.
