Neale Honoured as 2019/20 WDBS Player of the Season

World Disability Billiards and Snooker (WDBS) is today delighted to announce that Nick Neale has been selected as this year’s winner of the Vic Hartley WDBS Player of the Season award.

First introduced in 2019, the award recognises the outstanding contribution of one of our players each season, taking into account a wide-range of factors including on-table results, general conduct and contribution to WDBS outside of our tournaments.

Following a highly competitive season which has seen the selected players win no fewer than 24 titles between them over the past 12 months, the WDBS team had an extremely difficult decision to make in respect of this year’s winner – with Neale ultimately emerging victorious.

On table, Neale has enjoyed another extremely successful season during which he remained unbeaten within his own classification group. He also claimed victory at the mixed classification Welsh Open competition in Cwmbran last August and with his consistently high scoring continued to set the highest standard at WDBS competitions.

In addition to his success at our events, Neale also represented WDBS with distinction at the World Snooker Federation Open in Malta this January, the world’s premier tournament for amateur players. Having won two of his three round-robin matches, he then took eventual runner-up and leading amateur star Iulian Boiko to a deciding frame, narrowly losing 3-2 in the knockout rounds. During the event he also provided support and guidance to the other WDBS players competing in the tournament.

The 47-year-old also reached the semi-finals of the World Seniors 6-Red World Championship qualifying event in Sheffield only last month, notably defeating former English Amateur Championship finalist Wayne Townsend in the quarter-finals.

As his prize Neale will be presented with a set of 1G Aramith snooker balls and a keepsake trophy in recognition of his achievement. He succeeds last year’s recipient of the award Daniel Lee as Player of the Season.

On receiving the award, Neale said: “I would like to thank the Board for voting for me for this award and also to congratulate all of the other nominated players, who I am sure all of them were more than capable of winning this award.

“I would like to thank all of the players across the eight categories on a great job. I would urge all other players out there with a disability who haven’t tried to play to check out the WDBS website to try and play in these great events.

“I would also like to thank my family and friends for standing by me and making me play this game again.”

WDBS would like to congratulate all of the players who made the shortlist on their achievements this season.

Nominations by group:

Group 1/2: Tony Southern

Group 3: Nigel Coton

Group 4: Daniel Blunn

Group 5: Mickey Chambers

Group 6A: Mohamed Faisal Butt

Group 6B: Leroy Williams

Group 7: Nick Neale

Group 8: Shabir Ahmed