LUKE Moffat's third place finish at the County Rank-ing Trials will now see him representing Worcester-shire.

Luke Moffat made a great effort by finishing third I the ranking trials thus being able now to play for the county.

With five of last season's top six competing alongside last year's cadets, Jack Higgs (Malvern) and Tom McKe-ever (Kidderminster), another highly competitive event was guaranteed.

It was Higgs who overcame Moffat 11-9, 13-11, 11-8 in the group match, while other pool matches saw Evesham's Andrew Bryant defeating Michael Langston (Broms-grove/Redditch) before the latter accounted for Eve-sham's Chris Pearce.

Alun Chung came through a tough test against Dudley's Joshua Griffiths, while Tristan Gretton overcame another Dudley opponent in the shape of Ben Mumford. Gretton, though, then lost out to Kidd-erminster's Alex Baldwin.

In the second round, Sasha Grokhotov (Bromsgrove /Redditch) came up against Higgs and Moffat. Perhaps still shaken by his group loss, Moffat put up little resistance with Grokhotov winning 8, 7 and 9.

Higgs did drop another game, this time to Bryant but the top match saw Moffat face Chris Baldwin (Kiddermin-ster).

The Evesham youngster won the first two games but his opponent fought back to set up a fifth game that went all the way with Moffat just shading it 15-13.

In the last round both Higgs and Grokhotov won their matches to claim the top two places, while only one point separated the next three players - Moffat and Chris and Alex Baldwin with Jamie Mills (Worcester) only another point behind.

Both Chris Baldwin and Jamie Mills, although losing to Grokhotov defeated Bryant, while Moffat secured a win over Jon McKeever but lost to Alex Baldwin.

This kept all three again within a point but Moffat was placed third having beaten Chris Baldwin.