Unbeaten Banbury West End came through a thrilling tie-break shoot-out at Stourbridge to maintain their 100 per cent record in the National Club League this year.

Forced to play a weakened team, because Tom Greenland is in Mauritius, Iain Bates is in Turkey, Colin Bennett was unavavilable and Neil Watts had a back strain, West End showed their strength in depth by forcing a 3-3 scoreline and then winning the tie-break shoot-out 2-1.

Dylan Williams and John Spratt lost their singles matches but Ian Flanagan thrashed his opposite number 6-0, 6-1 and Russell Boulton came through a hard-fought singles battle with Damon Dawson, winning the first set 7-4 in a tie-break.

Each team won one doubles match to make it 3-3. Under National Club League rules, a shoot-out followed.

Although he had to play No 2 in the main singles, because his rating was below that of Williams, Flanagan was in such good form that West End nominated him to lead off the shoot-out and he won his tie-break against the Stourbridge No 1 Les Davies.

Spratt went down in his shoot-out to Nigel Jones but Banbury's doubles duo of Boulton and Williams proved too good for their Stourbridge counterparts.

The victory has put Banbury West End into the play-offs, but team manager John Spratt wants them to win the West Midlands Area section to guarantee playing a runner-up in the play-offs on July 16.

"We were delighted to win against Stourbridge with the team we had to put out," Spratt said. "If we can win our remaining match against McIntosh we're guaranteed to finish top and we would then face the runner-up of the East region and by winning that we would go through to the finals in Bournemouth."