Tyrone cueists meet 35 years after first locking horns

THIRTY-FIVE years after their first meeting as a couple of fresh-faced youngsters, two Tyrone snooker legends will again lock horns in the latter stages of the Northern Ireland Championships.

This weekend, close friends and long-term rivals on the green baize, Dungannon’s Patrick Wallace and Castlederg’s Dermot McGlinchey will face-off for a place in the last four at Antrim Sports Club.

Between them, they have won the prestigious title 10 times – Wallace with eight crowns – and they have enjoyed time on the main professional tour during the past four decades, with Patrick reaching the quarter-finals of the World Championship in 2001 and he reached the World Senior Championship final in 2018.

Both have come a long way since that first encounter in the President’s Club [the snooker hal above the Coach Inn] in Omagh in 1986 when Dermot was a supremley talented 13 year-old and Patrick was 16, in the Northern Ireland Under-19 Championship, which McGlinchey won 2-0.

Since then, McGlinchey has won the Northern Ireland title in 2006 and 2010, as well as losing three other deciders, and at this point in his career, he’s just intent on enjoying each and every match.

“So, it was 35 years ago I first played Patrick and it’s 35 years since I first reached the semi-finals, so to be reaching the quarter-final at this stage, you have to try to enjoy it!,” he said.

FULL STORY IN THIS WEEK’S CHRONICLE