Sports facilities in Mdina

The ditch outside Mdina had for years been the focus of sport for the Mdina and Rabat area. The football pitch was the training ground for the Magpies. It also was the location for regular local tournaments involving teams from Ajax, Mdina, Domingos, White City, and many others.

Hundreds used to line up above the pitch at Howard Gardens to watch these events. Recently it has become the training ground for Third Division Mdina Knights FC. There was a netball pitch and a tennis court that were maintained by the Malta Playing fields Association of the time.

The netball pitch was turned into a five-a-side football pitch in 1969. Innumerable summer tournaments are held there. Next to it beneath the bridge is a tennis court. This was laid down early last century, for recreational use by all the staff of the Connaught Hospital in the Vilhena palace, today the Natural History Museum.

In the late 1950s, it was passed on to the Malta Playing Fields Association and this became the centre of all activities for the MPFA Rabat district.

Unfortunately this is going to be a definite thing of the past. The authorities are ignoring all this and are permanently removing these sport areas, making them inaccessible.

This is in contrast with trying to regenerate interest in local sport as in time past. An important part of many people's lives, of my generation, is being extinguished.

Many in Rabat and Mdina will be thinking of those days with nostalgia.