BARRY Barry Noble and Chris Thompson, arguably York's best darts players of this era, featured in the two major tournaments to come to the region this week.

It's a tremendous bonus for the York area to have the British Darts Organisation choose Bridlington Spa for their future four-day bonanzas comprising the Embassy World Championship qualifying stages and the Winmau World Masters events.

And the latest announcement is that the British Open is also to make its home there.

In the Embassy this week, Thompson was narrowly defeated in the second round by Tyne and Wear's Paul Williams, while Noble brilliantly progressed from 200 global qualifiers to a nail-biting tie-breaker board final.

He had four darts to beat Austrian Robert Wagner, which would have given him another memorable TV appearance at Lakeside in January.

Thompson tumbled in the Masters first round 2-1 to USA No 1 Ray Carver, while Noble lost in the second to highly rated Swede Marcus Korhonan, who, last year at 17, became the youngest-ever to qualify for the Embassy finals.

The York duo were in exalted company, Indeed, current Embassy World Champion Aussie Tony David surprisingly took a first-round exit and previous title holders John 'Boy' Walton, Ray Barneveld and John Park also bit the dust.

When the competition reached the semi-finals Steve Beaton (London) and Steve Coote (Lancashire) were the people's choices for the title. But again the outsiders shocked.

Hertfordshire's Tony West edged out Coote, a firefighter who retur-ned to Manchester overnight to honour his shift, and Bristol's Mark Dudbridge beat Beaton, who was odds on to repeat his 1993 success.

West took the first two sets of the final but Dudbridge brilliantly collected the next five and won 7-4 with two 180's in the final game.

Updated: 12:30 Tuesday, November 05, 2002