Cork snooker clubs cue up for Munster Championships in Killarney

EXCITEMENT is building ahead of the 2024 Munster Snooker Championships, which gets underway on Friday, January 19. 

It's always a special event below in the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney and it promises to be another wonderful event.

The Crucible Club in Cork are no strangers to success and they will be hoping to bounce back after losing in a fantastic final last year, going down by a single match in a titanic battle with neighbours Youghal.

Such a consistent and powerful team in recent years, the Crucible have strong claims of landing Munster success once again. Ryan Cronin has impressed in recent months and the Crucible star is the current number one amateur player in Ireland. 

In the first two ranking tournaments this year, Cronin got the better of Youghal's Ross Bulman, who ended last season as the number one player in the country along with a top-four finish in the European Amateur Snooker Championships in Malta. Cronin is a class act and always a tough nut to crack. 

He will take serious beating in Killarney and he can drive the Crucible to the latter stages of the event. Grey Casey is another man with an impressive Killarney record and he is another player to watch. The likes of David Cassidy, Daniel O'Regan and Noel Landers make up the Crucible team and they are very talented snooker players.

Last year belonged to Youghal CYMS as the Seasiders delivered a fairytale success, winning the Munster Championships for a second time, 23 years on from winning it for the very first time. It was a magnificent final and it was a deserving success for the Youghal team. They will be expecting to make another bold bid and Ross Bulman is always a tough player to beat. 

Hitting the crossbar in recent months on the national stage, this will be a big target for the Irish snooker star. Aaron Tobin was another to shine in Killarney last year and he recently banged in another maximum 147 break. 

The Youghal team is made up of three other very talented snooker players, Adam Fitzgerald, Adam Bulman and Conor Kennedy. They worked very well as a team last year and under the guidance of Brendan Cooney, there worth watching out for once again.

FAVOURITES

New Institute Snooker Club are probably the team to beat. Despite only reaching the semi-finals last year, they bounced back a week later when winning the All-Ireland Team Championships. They have a fabulous team which will be headed by Irish star and leading player for many years, Brendan O'Donoghue.

It will be a busy weekend of Snooker as the Munster B Team Championships will also take place. That was won last year by the Crucible B team.

Action will get underway on Thursday week, with the main event starting on Friday morning. 

The Liam O'Connor and Pauline Greer Memorial Flyer kick starts the action on Thursday week and the 64-player event was sold out within a couple of hours. Brendan O'Donoghue (Nenagh) defeated Ryan Cronin (Crucible) in last year's event.