When the draws were made recently for Qualification Round One of the 2014 European Championship, Malta were drawn in Group C along with five other teams.

The teams involved in three groups of these initial qualification rounds will be in action between April 4 and 7 and will play over five sessions. These are the countries that did not qualify for the recent European Championships that were played in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

The Maltese national team, now under the guidance of newly-appointed coach Karl Izzo, were paired with Russia, Portugal, Israel, Bulgaria and Denmark.

Under new LEN regulations, the three group tournaments will be staged at three different venues – Georgia, Switzerland and Denmark. In each group, the teams will play one another on a round-robin basis.

At the end of the first phase of the qualifying tournament, the teams going through will be re-seeded in new groups to play in Qualification Round Two (July 11-13) on a system based on the ranking attained in the previous qualification round.

This ranking will be decided according to the total of the points gained in each group across the three tournaments.

The successful teams will then proceed to Qualification Round Three (November 7 and 10) with the last qualifying teams playing in the Championship proper between July 13 and 26, 2014 in Budapest, Hungary.