IT has been a disappointing few days for both of Keighley’s professional pool players.

Both were in action on the big stage with Ultimate Pool over the Bank Holiday Weekend, with Arfan Dad aiming to win the Masters on Saturday and Chris Melling looking to reach the Champions League semi-finals on Monday night.

Neither succeeded, which would no doubt have caused immense frustration for the pair, given how far they had progressed in the respective competitions.

The Masters began months ago, and involved two group stages.

The first aim was to qualify for the last-32, which was split into eight groups of four.

Dad, Melling and Bradford native Karl Boyes made it to that stage, but while the latter two were knocked out by Jordan Shepherd and Shaun Storry respectively, the former downed Aaron Davies and Dom Cooney to reach the quarter-finals.

Finals Day was held on Saturday, but Dad did not find out his last-eight opponent until last Wednesday, when Scotsman Scott Gillespie made it through his group.

Whether having only played in the competition three days prior made a difference, it is hard to say, but Gillespie beat the Keighley native 7-4 to set up a semi-final against Jake Dylan Newlove.

The Scot won that enthralling last-four clash 8-6 and completed a fantastic week by edging out Jimmy Croxton 10-9 in a sensational final.

Melling might be sick of the sight of Shepherd by this point. The duo took part in the Pairs Cup together last year, but have had plenty of individual battles against one another since.

And with the Welshman knocking his Keighley friend out of the Masters, he repeated the trick by doing it in the Champions League on Monday.

Melling made it through the initial group stage after beating Gary Clarke and Cleve Thompson.

He also drew with Luke Gilbert, before knocking the youngster out by recording a faster time in their decisive six-red shootout.

But he had a tough time on Monday, with Shepherd beating him 4-1.

That followed him losing his opening group game 3-2 at the hands of Neil Raybone, with those two results knocking Melling out.

It meant his last game was irrelevant for him, but that was not the case for opponent Tom Ford.

Ford needed to beat Melling to guarantee his progression into the last-four at the expense of Raybone, who had just knocked Shepherd out of the tournament with a 4-2 win.

And Ford was in cruise control, as he romped to a 4-1 win, leaving Melling winless and with just four frames to his name all night.

Ford is the first of the four semi-finalists, with the others to be decided over the next three Mondays.