Richard Bland produced his best day's golf of the season to roar into contention for the Dubai Desert Classic at the Emirates GC yesterday.

The 30-year-old Stoneham clubman tends to pull out the stops when there's some serious money at stake and with £1m on offer in Dubai this week, he is now in a position to get a sizeable share of it.

From being on the fringes of the cut when he started out his second round, Bland cruised from level par to six-under before his first slip-up of the day, one hole from home, left him with a round of 67.

It was still good enough to leave him in a tie for 20th place - five shots behind a four-way share-out for the lead between Ernie Els, Alastair Forsyth, David Lynn and Finland's Mikko Ilonen.

Bland had set the pattern for his second round with a storming finish on the first day when he played his last ten holes in four under par.

Yesterday he picked up four more shots to reach the turn in 32 then birdied the second and the fourth to move up to 13th place. However, the tricky 438-yard eighth, which cost him a shot on Thursday, again kicked him in the teeth. But he followed a bogey there with a safe par at the last.

There will be no pay-day, though, for Matt Blackey, now a neighbour of Bland's in Bassett.

At three over after his first round, Blackey needed things to happen quickly - and they didn't. He parred his way through from the tenth to 18th where a bogey left him four over and seemingly well out of it.

But after picking up his first shot of the day at the third, Blackey saw a chink of light and when he birdied the sixth and seventh he suddenly had a chance. But his need for birdies at the last two holes forced him to gamble and he lost. He bogeyed both, finishing with a round of 72 and missed the cut by four.