THE finals night of the Roberts Bakery Cup take place on Thursday when eight players will be battling it out to take home the Keith Birkett Trophy, writes David O'Brien.

The competition sponsored by Roberts Bakery, which was first run in 1978, will take place at Crosstown BC in Knutsford starting at 6.45pm.

The first game of the finals night sees James Eaton of Comberbach take on David Orr of Frodsham Red Lion.

Eaton only took up the game a few years ago and will be looking to claim his first major title in Mid Cheshire.

He and Orr are joined in the top half of the draw by Dan Moores, also of Comberbach, and John Gurney, of Castle Sports.

Gurney, a prolific competition winner over the years, has surprisingly never won the Roberts Bakery Cup and with five final defeats in the competition he will be looking to get his name on the trophy for the first time.

The bottom half of the draw sees four Cheshire county players line up.

Steven Morrey of Castle Sports clashes with his teammate Jason Cornes, who has won the competition on two previous occasions, his last coming in 2001.

In the final game of the last eight Danny Nixon of Wharton Cons comes up against another Castle player in Andy Hamman.

Nixon is also a former winner of the competition, with his victory coming in 2014.

Meanwhile, Nicola Boulton could not have come closer to defending her BCGBA Ladies Senior Merit title at Brighouse Sports on Saturday afternoon.

She made it to the final but lost a close encounter with Chloe Hirst 21-20.

On Saturday night at Owley Wood Andrew Poynton of Castle Sports won the Mid Cheshire League Challenge Cup with a 21-8 victory over Alan Dean in the final.

Poynton, who only recently started playing the game again after a long break, collected the trophy in the competition for players in divisions two, three and four of the Mid Cheshire League.

The Brunner Cup quarter finals take place on Saturday.

Wharton Cons face Manor Road at Grove Sports in Ellesmere Port, while Castle Sports take on Heswall RBL at Farndon BC, with both ties starting at 2pm.

The latest qualifiers in the Castle Sports Classic on Saturday were Richie Goddard and Marc Daugherty.

This Saturday sees the final qualifying session before the finals day takes place on Saturday, July 24.

Over in Winsford on Sunday the latest qualifiers in the Wharton Cons Open were Ben Stapleton and Stuart Goodwin, who both won their qualifying games 21-10.

The field for this Sunday is Lee Johnstone, Andy Gregory (Comberbach), Steven Morrey (Castle Sports), Matt Hill, Nick Tideswell, Craig Podmore, Chris Cooper, Matt Gilmore, Michael Coupe, Andrew Armstrong, Nigel Parker (Helsby), Dale Kenyon, Martin Gaut, Leighton Roberts, Nathan Lacey and Joe Langford.