Irish morale was restored at the European bridge championships in Tenerife yesterday when Irish pairs qualified for the semi-finals of all three pairs events.
Irish followers' disappointment at the team's defeat in the quarter final the previous day was forgotten when in the seniors pairs competition, David Jackson and Greer Mckenzie finished 17th in the three-session qualifying stage with the first 22 going through automatically.
Following a good opening, Jackson and Mckenzie dropped in the second but a good finish in the last set saw them safely through. Michael MacDonagh and Seán Ó Lubaigh failed to make the cut and now enter the repechage. Robinson and Onstott, USA lead the qualifiers.
Veteran pair Patsy Meehan and Rose O'Farrell came through the women's preliminary rounds in 25th place with 28 automatically advancing. Galway pair Emer Joyce and Joan Kenny suffered the frustration of missing out by just two places. They, along with Gilda and Noreen Pender, Ann Fitzgerald and Lucy Phelan, Aoife MacHale and Antoinette McGee, go into the B semi-final. Arrigona and Olivieri, Italy lead.
Jim Sexton and Terry Walsh are through to the semi-final of the open pairs in 74th place of the 181 competing pairs, a noteworthy achievement for Sexton in his first international event. The more fancied Irish pair, Cian Holland and Gay Keaveney, finished down the field. Carpentieri and Guarino, Italy, headed the qualifiers. John Carroll and Tomy Garvey, as well as Tom Hanlon and Hugh McGann, qualify for the semi-final stage by virtue of their quarter-final place in the teams championship. Players still in the later stages of the teams event automatically join the pairs competition at the later stages.
In the open teams championship, Ireland's conquerors in the quarter final, the Miroglio team consisting of Polish and Italian players, advanced to the final, where they meet the Netherlands team which beat Ireland in the quarter finals of the Olympiad in Istanbul last October.