Round one of the boy’s singles saw no shocks as the quarter-finals shapes up into an incredibly strong line-up as the top seeds are re-introduced.

The best game of round one was played between junior number one Sam Walker and Richard Andrews from Buckinghamshire which went the full five-game distance.

Andrews led twice in the match 1-0 and 2-1 but both times Waker replied and took the match to a deciding game which went right down to the wire.

With their horns locked at 7-7 it looked as though Andrews had made the killer move when he led 9-7 but crucially Walker fought back once again as he was not to be denied victory and eventually leveled at 10-10 taking the match to deuce in the last.

From there Walker played two sublime points and with a raptuous round of applause he sealed an epic game 12-10.

That victory was for the right to play Liam Pitchford in the quarter-finals to which Walker said of his chances: “We’ll see, we’ll see. It’s a tough draw, clearly.”

In the other round one games there were impressive 3-0 wins for Garth Kinlocke, David McBeath and Tom Maynard over Will Maybanks, Lewis Gray and George Downing respectively.

In the last match Gavin Evans beat Emran Hussain 3-1. This meant the quarter-final draw was;

Pitchford vs Walker, Maynard vs Evans, Ware vs McBeath and Kinlocke vs Doran.