Montenegro are the European junior champions.
A country with a population of just over 600,000 managed to add the cadets’ title to the one they landed in 2008 with the senior team. Montenegro beat Serbia 7-5 in a keen duel watched by a sizeable crowd at the National Pool, yesterday.
This is a truly great achievement for a small country which, however, is steeped in the traditions of the game, having been part of Yugo-slavia until some years ago.
The Montenegrins gave a two-goal start to their opponents but then hit back to score three times for a 3-2 first-session lead.
The momentum was kept up as Montenegro’s top marksman Bog-dan Durdic scored twice for a 5-2 advantage before Rade Joksimovic reduced the arrears for Serbia.
The battle was tense as Monte-negro suffered a spate of exclu-sions. The Serbs, backed by massive vocal support by their fans on the away terraces, fought gamely to reduce the arrears after Blazo Mitrovic had made it 6-3.
Serbia then managed to pull a goal back for a 6-4 scoreline with the last session left.
Serbia went for tighter press. Nikola Jaksic clipped a goal back but Durdic reached his hat-trick for a 7-5 lead for Montenegro.
Fatigue crept in but both teams kept putting everything into it with the winners administering their advantage diligently to emerge victorious for the first time in their young history in this category.
At the end of the marathon event, Joe Caruana Curran, the ASA president, thanked all participants for a successful tour-nament.
Fernando Carpena Peres, on behalf of the LEN Bureau, thanked the Maltese association for their excellent organisation.
Meanwhile, in the first match of the afternoon classification mat-ches, Spain avenged their 14-11 defeat at the hands of Turkey in the group match, this time beating them 13-5 to place seventh ahead of the Turks.
In the next encounter, Croatia beat Russia 12-6 to occupy the fifth position in the final classification.
It is to be noticed that Croatia had also won the group tie against the Russians 8-7 last week.
In the bronze medal match, Italy again had the better of Hungary, winning by a similar scoreline to that of the group qualifier.
Results
Spain 13
Turkey 5
(4-2, 2-1, 2-0, 5-2)
Russia 6
Croatia 12
(1-4, 2-3, 2-3, 1-2)
Italy 10
Hungary 9
(1-2, 2-1, 3-2, 4-4)
Montenegro 7
Serbia 5
(3-2, 2-1, 1-1, 1-1)