Paul Waring maintained his grip at the top of the Cazoo Classic leaderboard, closing out round two with a two-stroke lead in Southport on a day when no Irish players managed to make the cut.
Level par or better was enough to see action over the weekend. Cormac Sharvin (73), Jonathan Caldwell (74) and Niall Kearney (75) were all one shot beyond the cut mark. David Higgins, Gavin Moynihan and Simon Thornton ended up on three over, with Paul Dunne on eight over.
Waring, who tied the course record with a nine-under 63 in round one, carded 70 on a second day of play that saw the entire field challenged by a dramatic shift in wind direction at Hillside.
He opened his afternoon with a bogey on the 10th which he quickly balanced out with a birdie from six feet on the par-four 12th, one of five on the day for the Wirral native who also bogeyed twice more before finishing the day on 11 under par for the tournament.
Scotland's Grant Forrest is one of three men heading into the weekend in joint second place on nine under, alongside Frenchman Julien Guerrier and Sweden's Jens Dantorp, with all three players following up their opening-day 66s with rounds of 69.
England's Garrick Porteous, meanwhile, dropped four places from his second-place finish on Thursday, double-bogeying the four-par third to finish at par on 72.
That left him in joint sixth place on seven under with compatriot Callum Shinkwin and Finn Sami Valimaki, whose excellent afternoon saw him climb 35 places and sink an eagle on the five-par 11th.
