This Month saw the All Stars play their final Challenge Match against their most formidable opponents faced yet, The Perth All Stars Team and was held at North Perth Pot Black & I’d just like to say how impressed I am with the way the All Stars Team performed and conducted themselves, you guys did a fantastic job in every respect, successfully out performing my very  high expectations. Well done, seems the coaching has payed off. The final score line is testament to that 110 to 99 against a very tough team. Very well done. Enough from me I’ll let Dan tell the story. Az.

Saturday morning and I’m finally home from work at 4:30 am after starting at 10:00 am Friday. Very tired now but looking forward to a nice sleep in. Tam’s phone rings at 9:15 am, its Az “Hey man we are short a player for today, are you interested?” after a solid 2.5 seconds deliberation I reply with a firm (but ever so polite) “NO”. It’s now 9:25 am and thanks to being rudely awoken by my little balding “mate” Az, I’m wide awake. So after a quick discussion with Tam, I ring Az and let him know we’ll be there in 20 minutes. We arrive at Miss Q’s and I’m stoked to see that I’m not the only one who looks like they need another 16 hours sleep before contemplating playing any form of decent pool. After a Red Bull and a relatively smooth trip to North Perth (thanks Rob) we are at Pot Black. My first thoughts were that the venue looks really good, a heap of nice looking snooker tables down one side and all the pool tables down the other. Red Bull number two, I’m nearly feeling human again!! The Allstars start to play some warm up frames and the talk is that the tables are fairly true and run pretty well, that’s a relief to hear. Before too long the Perth challenge team members start to wander in, with a few familiar faces amongst them. Young Keirnan, who we see at Miss Q’s from time to time and a great young player, Gordon Whittaker, an absolute legend in Western Australian cue sports and Jade, the current Western Australian Women’s Snooker champion. I had a lot to do with Jade a few years back during my time on the Western Australian Eight Ball Federation Committee, so it was good to catch up. Kez does the quick introductions and we are away. The Allstars get off to a cracking start in the 1st round and hold their own for the next couple of rounds. Then the Perth team starts to run away with it for a few rounds. Myself, Az, Kez and Tam try to get vocal and fire up the Allstars, it works and they rally together and start to lift towards the end of match play and the final result was really close. There was some cracking games played by both teams and I was really impressed by the standard of play and by the way that the Allstars kept plugging away as hard as they could. There were some really good results from both sides, from the Perth side the girls were the stand out performers, especially Seleina, who was the player of the day with a solid 13 out of 15 frames. As for the Allstars, there was some excellent results too, Danyl Brown with 10 wins, Damien Stenhouse with 12, Jarrad Nagtegaal with 11, Kez and Pagey with 9. I managed to get 12 wins which I was stoked about. Overall I would have to say it was one of the most enjoyable days of match play I’ve been involved in for a long, long time. Thanks to Az for waking me up and to the Allstars for the opportunity to come along and be an Allstar for a day. Cheers, Uncle Dan.