Borg, Mifsud reach KO stage

Malta champion Alex Borg and Tony Mifsud joined Arthur Cachia in the knock-out stage of the European Championships, cur-rently under way in Belgium.

Tony Drago also made a big step forward in joining his team-mates to the next round by winning two other matches in Group C but Clayton Castaldi is now out of the reckoning in Group F.

Borg beat Ingvii Haldorsson, of Iceland, 4-0. He is heading Group H with maximum points from four matches.

His match against David Hogan determines the group winner.

Drago came from 2-0 down to beat Yannick Poulain, of France, 4-2 on Sunday.

Drago had two superb breaks of 81 and 126 and is now joint second in his group. Three players qualify into the knock-out stage.

Yesterday, Drago had the better of Germany's Patrick Einsle 4-3 in a tight match and his next fixture was against wooden-spoonist Sasa Novak, of Croatia.

Castaldi went down to newly-crowned Belgian champion Mario Guedens with the latter winning 4-0. Castaldi has now lost four times from five matches.

From the Masters event, Cachia won his fourth consecutive match to finish top of his group with maximium points.

At the end of the round-robin group Cachia was seeded fourth ahead of the knock-out stage.

In his last match, he beat Bambos Kuozis, of Cyprus. Cachia still holds the highest break of the Masters with 101.

Mifsud finished second in his Masters group with three wins out of four matches.

He beat Patrick Werrerbroeck 3-1 to make sure of his place in the last 32.