A YOUNG cue sports all-rounder from Basingstoke vindicated his decision to enter a regional snooker tournament instead of a pool competition.

Mickey Joyce pocketed £70 prize money and collected his second winner’s trophy of the season on the Cuestars South of England Under-21 Gold Tour.

The 13-year-old, who also won in Bournemouth in January, overcame Bradley Cowdroy 3-0 in the final of the ninth leg at Chandler’s Ford Snooker Club.

Bournemouth-based Cowdroy, who turned 15 the previous week, extracted the penalty points from the required snooker in the third frame, but Joyce secured victory with a tricky half-ball black into the green pocket.

Joyce said: “I was going to go to a pool tournament instead but I wanted to try to keep second place in the rankings.

“Getting a win was just fantastic. I was so lucky to get through the groups. I scraped through on frame average.”

He added: “Bradley’s good at getting snookers.”

Beaten by Jamie Wilson (Havant) and Anthony Rice (Fordingbridge) in his four-man round-robin group in the event sponsored by Pitman Training Winchester, Joyce qualified for the knockout in second place by one frame.

He was 1-0 down in the last-eight to Dan Sykes (Chandler’s Ford), who recorded the highest gold break of 75 in that frame, and to Londoner Adam Stacey in the semi-finals.

Joyce, who is sponsored by The Academy, Basingstoke, and Surrey-based Falcon Pools, has recently signed for the Hampshire Under-23 pool team because he enjoys the razzmatazz of the game.

“It’s a good atmosphere,” said the teenager, who also competes on the EASB Premier Junior Tour, a national circuit for the country’s best under-21 snooker players. “But I’m definitely not giving up snooker.”