IRELAND’S Fergal Quinn will play in the semi-finals of the WSF World Amateur Snooker Championship in Morocco on Friday evening.
The 24-year-old from Coalisland beat Austria’s Florian Nuessle 4-3 on Friday morning and will play China’s Yang Gao for a place in Saturday’s final.
The winner of the tournament will earn a two-year ticket for World Snooker’s Main Tour.
Quinn settled well early and a 58 on his first scoring visit looked like securing him the opening frame, but he allowed the Austrian back into it and looked like going 1-0 down when Nuessle potted a fine long brown with the last three colours appearing straight-forward.
However, he snookered himself behind the black when playing from blue to pink and a relieved Quinn potted the pink to move ahead.
Nuessle won the next two frames without any notable breaks and built an early lead in frame four to put Quinn under pressure. However, he responded well and after a 48 break brought him back into the frame he potted brown, blue and pink to level at 2-2.
An early 40 break gave Quinn control of the next but he was called for a foul when playing a pink to a corner pocket and Nuessle worked his way back into the frame. It came down to a battle on the colours, which went the way of the Austrian.
However, a break of 65 from the Tyrone man in frame six forced the decider and he added a 60 to seal the match in frame seven.
