It was a disappointing evening for Irish snooker players at the UK Championship as both Joe Swail and Gerard Greene were beaten in their second round clashes.
Swail lost out to Stephen Maguire by 9-8 while Greene was beaten 9-7 by Mark Williams.
Maguire, in a high-quality second session against Swail, knocked in runs of 107, 86 and 82, and a 67 enabled him to squeeze through.
'I led all the way - apart from the first frame he was never in front, but he kept coming back. I couldn't shake him off,' Maguire said afterwards.
Elsewhere, Shaun Murphy and Neil Robertson, two of snooker's hottest young properties, crashed out.
Murphy, the 2005 world champion, never got going as he lost 9-3 to rejuvenated Alan McManus in the second round.
Australian star Robertson, winner of the last ranking tournament, the Royal London Watches Grand Prix in Aberdeen, went out 9-5 against Finnish surprise package Robin Hull.
The damage was done for Murphy in the first session, after which he found himself trailing 6-2, and despite making a 76 break in tonight's opener he quickly succumbed to defeat.
Earlier, Ronnie O'Sullivan had been taken to the brink of defeat before scraping into the third round.
The former world number one went from 7-4 up to 7-8 down against Ricky Walden, but then battled back from 56 points behind to force a decider which he won with a break of 108.
O'Sullivan admitted he had been fortunate to go through, acknowledging an unpredictable bounce off a cushion had hindered Walden when he was on a potentially match-winning break of 52.
'The table wasn't the worst I've played on but it was somewhere near there,' said the 31-year-old from Essex. 'You just had to trust to luck with the cushions to get position on key shots.'
