The 2025 ranking Championship League Snooker has entered its stage 2, and yesterday Joe O’Connor and Stephen Maguire prevailed in Group A and Group B respectively. Here is the report shared by WST:

Maguire And O’Connor First Into Stage Three

Stephen Maguire and Joe O’Connor became the first two players to reach the last eight of the BetVictor Championship League as they topped their groups on Friday in Leicester.

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Phase two runs until Tuesday, with the eight group winners going into the third and final phase. The champion of the first ranking event of the 2025/26 season will be crowned on Wednesday night. 

Maguire, now playing his 28th professional season, started Group B with a 2-2 draw against Yuan Sijun, then beat Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 3-1 with breaks of 84, 67 and 66. His last match against Zhang Anda, who also had a win and a draw under his belt, would decide the group, and Scotland’s Maguire recovered from the loss of the first frame to win 3-1.

O’Connor was  in superb form in Group A, winning all three matches. He beat On Yee Ng 3-0 with a top break of 103, then saw off both Haydon Pinhey and Elliot Slessor by a 3-1 scoreline.

The action resumes on Saturday with Jack Lisowski among the quartet in Group D, while Pang Junxu is the top-ranked player in Group C.

On Yee Ng finished third in her “stage two” group gathering 5000 ranking points and hopefully she will grow in confidence from getting to stage two to start with, and not finishing last finish last in her stage 2 group. After all, when this event will come to an end, only 16 players will have done better than her in it.