Snooker: Veteran Steve Robertson pots sixth North Island title

Taranaki's Steve Robertson on his way to victory in the North Island snooker championship final in Havelock North yesterday. Photo / Paul Taylor

When former national snooker champion Steve Robertson moved from Waikato to Whanganui he was hoping to spend more time with a fishing rod than a cue.

"My mates keep picking me up to take me to tournaments. I don't practise ... I just turn up and play these days. I either play good or I play bad," Robertson said last night.

The formula works for the 61-year-old courier truck operator who reckons he hasn't been serious about snooker since 2000. Robertson won his sixth North Island title with a 3-1 victory against Auckland 19-year-old and 2016 national champion Louis Chand in yesterday's final of the 28-player event at the Havelock North Club.

"While I played well in patches I definitely didn't have my A game and only finished second in my section," Robertson recalled.

The Taranaki representative said he was just as unlucky to lose the first frame in the final as Chand was to lose the second.

"I got the last two frames pretty comfortable. My superior experience proved the difference," Robertson said.

He had a break of 81 during the first two days of the tournament and this was bettered by Hawke's Bay's national champion Bayden Jackson who had a 98 during his semifinal loss to Chand yesterday. Chand recovered from a two-frame deficit to beat Jackson 3-2.

Ironically Chand finished second in his last North Island final at the Havelock North Club in 2015 when he was beaten 3-0 by Jackson. Robertson beat Capital City's Mark Hannah 3-0 in their semifinal.

Yesterday's plate final saw Taranaki's Denin Bunn, a son of successful national coach Stan Bunn, beat Auckland's Paul van der Straten 2-1.

A feature of the tournament was the fact all members of the New Zealand under-21 and under-18 teams for next month's world championships in Jinan, China, including Chand and Bunn, turned out. Manager of the teams, Hawke's Bay's Dave Judd, was thrilled with how the youngsters performed in a quality field.

"They all performed really well and it was part of a good development process for them. They all have almost a month to practice what they got beat up on before heading to China."