A superb display and a 5-0 win over Brian Cini saw Englishman Louis Heathcote dashing Malta’s dream of having a local player making inroads in the European U-21 Championship at the Dolmen Hotel, yesterday.

“He played better and deserved to win. Nothing I could have done really, except giving my best,” Cini said after the quarter-final as his country’s snooker idol, former top-10 pro Tony Drago, summed it up well: “One day all good things come to an end.”

Later in the evening, Heathcote, from Leicester, went on to reach the final after a 5-2 win over Scotland’s Dylan Craig.

He will play either Germany’s Lukas Kleckers or Darryl Hill, of Isle of Man, in today’s best-of-11 final, starting at 2pm.

The day had started brightly for Cini after a 4-1 win over Tom Rees, of Wales, in a Last 16 match.

But now he will look to make up for his upset in the U-21 tournament by making progress in the European Championships for teams which get underway tomorrow.

Cini will be teaming up with Drago in the competition won by Alex Borg and Duncan Bezzina last year in Bucharest, Romania.

Borg and Bezzina will be defending their title at the Dolmen where the women’s and masters tournaments will also be staged.

In all, Malta will have seven teams in the men’s open.

The other pairs are Clayton Castaldi and Philip Ciantar, Aaron Busuttil and Chris Peplow, Joseph Cachia and Andre Pace, Melchior Galea and Neville Chetcuti and Frans Abdilla and Tony Mifsud.