Four final teams in French league

LA BAULE - The French three cushion league for teams turns into a final with La Baule, Andernos, Cetsi Morangis and Laxou. The four teams that qualified as numbers one and two in the regular competition, meet each other on 23 and 24 June in the arena of defending champion La Baule. In the semi-finals, La Baule plays against Laxou and Cetsi Morangis against Andernos.

The last league session was played in Group A. La Baule won the match against Rouen 8-0, Cetsi Morangis and Colmar played a draw. The Parisians therefore qualified as number two in the group for the final battle. La Baule finished with 10 points out of 6 matches and achieved the best average of all teams: 1.515. Cetsi finished with 7 points and 1.359, Colmar with 6 points and 1.333, Rouen gathered one match point.

In Group B the finalists were already known: Andernos finished with 9 points ahead of Laxou with 7 points, Albert with 6 and Gravelines with 2 points. Laxou secured the second place with a victory over Andernos 6-2. Albert closed the league with an 8-0 win against Gravelines, but was one point away from a place in the final round.

La Baule played his last match against Rouen, that was the last in the ranking and showed up without foreign players in the line-up. Jérémy Bury impressed with a victory over Facquet, 50-14 in 14 innings, the best match in the competition. De Bruijn bested Fontaine in 21 innings, Caudron beat Roxo in 30 and Devogelaere was the better of Sortais in 44. In the other match, a draw for Morangis was sufficient in the game against Colmar. The two captains of the Paris team lost their matches: Merckx against Coklu 50-40 in 31, Leppens against Nelin 50-45 in 28. Jean Christoph Roux (against Dion Nelin) and Jean Reverchon (against Riotto) won their matches for Cetsi.

In Group B, Laxou won the final match 6-2 vs Andernos. Jef Philipoom was the star in that match with a win over Roland Forthomme (50-22 in 22) and a run of 16. Martin Horn defeated Nikos Polychronopoulos 50-29 in 26. Albert had a walk-over against Gravelines (8-0) amongst others by victories of Glenn Hoffman over Ronny Daniels (50-22 in 25) and Peter Ceulemans over Martin Spoormans 50-42 in 31.