Records and feats add spice to success in sports. Waterpolo is no exception.
Team titles and individual honours won, goals scored and other achievements fill the recipients with great pride.
When referring to individual honours over the past 40 years or so, one cannot leave out Marco Manara, voted five times Player of the Year, Jonathan Valletta and Steve Camilleri, four times each, and the Dowling brothers Dirk and Kurt who each landed the honour on three occasions.
The list is extended when goal-scoring statistics are brought into the frame, with Camilleri raising the bar in recent years for others to emulate.
Delving deeper into statistics one comes across another achievement which could be regarded as very rare, almost unique.
Rolling back the years to 1989 one finds the names of Adrian Cachia and his brother Leonard in the Neptunes team, winners of four successive national league titles starting from 1986.
Both these players, Adrian as a stalwart goalkeeper and Leonard as a dour defender, must have been extremely elated to contribute massively to their team’s success in those years.
“Although 25 years have passed since we achieved that memorable record, I can still vividly recall the elation and pride we felt,” Adrian Cachia told Times of Malta.
“The great thing about those years was that we went into our games with great confidence... losing was never on the cards.
“Merit also goes to Claudio Silvestri for his guidance as coach,” the elder of the Cachias added.
Few would have thought then that almost a quarter of a century later, two other siblings would emulate such a feat.
Steve and Jordan Camilleri, also of Neptunes, played another impressive role in helping the Balluta Bay Reds scoop four titles on the trot between 2010 and 2013.
“To be honest I never thought about Adrian and Leonard’s achievement. Emulating it never crossed my mind.
“But now it fills me and Jordan with great pride once we are aware of it, as it is something that will go down in the club’s history as well as in that of local waterpolo,” Steve Camilleri said.
“In all four successive league wins I finished as top-scorer and in the last three I was voted Player of the Year,” he added.
However, Steve Camilleri played down these individual achievements when pointing out that the secret in equalling the record of the Cachia brothers was teamwork... ‘being united in victory and remaining united in defeat’.
When asked about the possibility of this ‘quadruple’ achievement being again equalled, the Neptunes and Bogliasco all-rounder mentioned his Maltese club’s youngsters, Miguel and Nikolai Zammit, sons of waterpolo player Charlie Zammit.
“Both these brothers are showing great promise in the junior ranks and they might do it,” he said.
Jordan, who is in his penultimate year of his course in medicine, shared his brother’s thoughts.
The Reds’ defender, also a Malta player who has now developed into a versatile performer, remarked that teamwork was of paramount importance along the road to success.
Outstanding feats such as those of the Cachia and Camilleri brothers in waterpolo, no doubt, add colour and romance to sport.
May we have more of this.