Dundalk darts | Carvill claims second successive Brother Eccles Cup

Thursday night was the final chance to qualify for the Dundalk Darts finals night next Saturday night, with the chance to win the Paddy Dixon Cup for the overall competition winner.

On offer last night was The Brother Eccles Cup, a cup that was won last year by Martin Carvill, but prior to that, it hadn't been played since 1985 when Dermot Ralph completed a hat-trick of wins in the competition.

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Prior to that, the only other winners of the cup were Pat McHugh and Paddy Dixon. So, like last year, the competition was an over-50s competition. A number of those playing on the night didn't look as though they were old enough to play in the competition.

16 players played on the night in four groups of four, two from each, then went through in a seeded draw. The group draw threw up some interesting groups.

The ever youthful Raymie "Da" Carroll was drawn in a group with his great friend Tommy Joe McCartney, and also drawn in that group were the two Aidan's, Minto and Thompson.

Tommy Joe would go on to top the group ahead of Da. Another group was made of reigning competition title holder, Martin Carvill, along with Joe Davidson, Hughie Shields, and Anthony Taaffe.

Martin won all three of his games to top the group, and an upset was caused with Anthony winning two of his games to also qualify from the group.

Alan Rogan won all three of his group games, and it went to a decider to see who else was qualifying from that group, with Johnny Knoblock getting the better of Brian Mc Ardle.

And the last group also went to a decider with Graham Unwin seeing off Fintan Rogers to top the group, with Fintan also qualifying.

In the quarter-final, Martin Carvill beat Raymie Carroll in a game that went the distance. Anthony Taaffe was still pulling off shock wins and beat Alan Rogan in the decider.

Graham Unwin beat Jonny Knobloch, and Tommy Joe beat Fintan Rogers. Graham would then go on to beat Anthony in the deciding game in the semi-final, despite Anthony hitting numerous big scores and also a 96 checkout on 20, double 20 and then double 18.

The other semi-final was a battle of the big hitters with Tommy Joe and Martin facing off before Martin would eventually qualify for the final.

In the final, despite Graham's best efforts, Martin would go on to win, and in doing so, he would be a back-to-back winner of the Brother Eccles Cup.

Graham Unwin would qualify for Finals Night as the best placed that had not already qualified for Finals Night on Saturday, 30th August.

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