Camilleri earns more plaudits
Although Rari Nantes Bogliasco have not gained much ground in the Italian top league table due to a series of narrow defeats of late (they are on the seven-point mark from eight matches), Steve Camilleri is catching the eye with some prominent...
Although Rari Nantes Bogliasco have not gained much ground in the Italian top league table due to a series of narrow defeats of late (they are on the seven-point mark from eight matches), Steve Camilleri is catching the eye with some prominent all-round displays and scoring stints for his Genoese team.
His sound cover play and ability as a goal-grabber are turning out to be very useful for RN Bogliasco. Team coach Massimo De Crescenzo is acknowledging Camilleri's versatility by utilising him most of the time and basing tactics around a nucleus of players of which the Maltese forms part.
Journalists are reserving plaudits for Camilleri, the latest being a comment from Franco Ruta, a correspondent for a top waterpolo website in Italy.
In his coverage of the match between RN Bogliasco and SS Lazio, which the latter won 9-8, Ruta wrote... "among the players in the team from Liguria, Camilleri had a good game. From one match to another, the Maltese is proving useful both in the execution as well as in the covering phases."
In that match, Camilleri scored two more goals to consolidate his position at the top of his team's scorers' list with 17 goals, two more than Arnaldo Deserti, another prolific scorer for Bogliasco and among the top goal-notchers in the Italian league.
On a national level, the Maltese player, who joined RN Bogliasco at the end of last summer, is lying sixth in the scorers' classification. Four of the top five are foreigners of a very high standing.
These are super star Vanja Udovicic, of Pro Recco, Heiko Nossek, of RN Sori, Boris Popovic, of Nervi, and Savona's Goran Fiorentin, now a naturalised Italian.
The ninth round of matches will be played on December 20 when RN Bogliasco will be away to ES Catania, for whom Camilleri's former team-mate at Neptunes, Ivan Milakovic, is the leading scorer with 13 goals.
Camilleri is then due to return to Malta for the Christmas break. After which his team's next commitment is against the league leaders Pro Recco on January 6.