Heart wrenching singles final

And that was just what was happening off the table.

Billy Castle’s 4-2 victory over Mitch Wade in the Winchester City & District Snooker League final was played out to a heart-stopping backdrop.

While the jukebox dispensed soft ballads and slit-your-wrist country and western songs, the television just feet away from the open-plan snooker room was showing a documentary about children’s heart transplants.

We are all now familiar with infections, rejections and the Berlin Heart, an artificial heart for kids. We lived every minute of the parents’ agony.

And I swear that both players, the referee and the sprinkling of spectators gasped as one when the narrator said: “But there was a problem.”

News from the Q School in Sheffield reached us late in the match that Nick Jennings had lost 4-2 to Ryan Causton.

The only light moment of the evening was when the table was plunged into darkness during the first frame.

Through the hatch popped the club doorman’s head.

“Have you put a pound in the meter?” he asked referee Mark McLean.

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