Alan McManus will trust history does not repeat itself when he meets Stephen Hendry in the quarter-finals of the £440,000 Liverpool Victoria UK Championship.

McManus struck a rare blow for the favourite in Preston last night with his fourth-round dismissal of Northern Ireland's Jason Prince.

But the world number ten's 9-5 victory won't have struck terror into Hendry as McManus was the first to admit.

"I played well in my previous game against Jimmy White but I struggled for most of this match and I will certainly need to play better when I come up against Stephen," he said.

McManus led 5-3 after the first session, extending his lead to 6-3 when Prince missed the pink. Prince won the next two, returning the favour by pinching the 10th on the pink as well and then should have levelled at 6-6.

He had trailed 46-0 but fought back with a break of 51 only to miss the final black along the side cushion. McManus returned to the table to make the most of his good fortune and then took the final two frames with breaks of 58 and 40.

Two of the giant killers who have denuded the championship of all but three members of snooker's top 10 met with a quarterfinal place at stake with Gerard Greene and Gary Ponting reaching a 4-4 overnight position.

Greene, a left hander responsible for the elimination of the six times world and UK champion Steve Davis and a former world and UK semi-finalist Andy Hicks, went to 3-1 with a break of 71.

Ponting, who had to withdraw from last month's Grand Prix at Bournemouth with a migraine, has here been inflicting headaches on others, notably John Higgins, the world number two, and New Zealand's number one, Dene O'Kane, who he has left among the ranks of the fallen.

A break of 80 and a clearance of 61 to win on the black brought him level at 3-3 and when he once more dropped a frame behind another solid effort, 68, ensured a 44 scoreline for the resumption this afternoon.