This year’s national waterpolo league competitions, organised by the Aquatic Sports Association of Malta, has undergone several innovations which are bound to make the championship for the ten participants more interesting and crowd-pulling.
This is in essence what the association’s president, Joe Caruana Curran, and Anthony Scicluna, Chief Officer BOV, sponsors of the ASA competitions, told reporters in Sta Venera yesterday.
The increased participation totalling ten teams, the recent upsurge in the popularity of the game due the excellent performances of our national teams, and the fact that the new format is devised in such a way that there will be no meaningless encounters at all levels, should make for an intriguing season with an exciting climax at the beginning of September.
The summer season gets under way on June 3 when Neptunes face Sliema for the President’s Cup and Marsaskala take on Valletta in the Sportswriters Cup.
The national championships start three days later and here the teams will be split in two groups of five each.
These will contest the preliminary round which starts with the match between champions Neptunes Grimaldi and Marsascala Mor€. The teams were seeded according to their positions in the respective divisions last summer.
The draws resulted in Neptunes, Sliema, Valletta, Marsascala and Ta’ Xbiex placed in Group A and San Ġiljan, Sirens, Exiles, Otters and Marsaxlokk drawn in Group B.
The first three-placed teams in each group will form the six Premier Division teams while the last two will make up the four contestants in the First Division. The preliminaries are due to end on June 25.
The first step towards eliminating the useless earning of points was the fact that the points won in a match between two teams in the preliminaries will be carried forward to the first round proper once the respective divisions are determined.
After the two rounds in the Premier and three in the First Division, which are due to end on August 9, the competition will enter the final stages.
The top division will be divided into the Championship and Relegation Pools of three teams each.
The teams will play two more rounds, with the first-placed team in the top pool being declared champions and the last-placed team in the relegation pool playing against the team finishing top in the First Division.
Meanwhile, the KO for the Premier Division will start on July 8 and end on August 16 while that of the lower division will start on July 23 come to a close on August 12. There will be two breaks between June 8 and 12 and July 27-30.
In his address, Scicluna re-affirmed the ever-increasing popularity of waterpolo in our islands against the background of the successes of our representative teams and the rising interest of our clubs.
He said that all this augurs another bright summer of waterpolo.
First matches
June 6: 18.45 Neptunes vs Marsascala; 20.00 Valletta vs Ta’ Xbiex.
June 7: 18.45 San Ġiljan vs Otters; 20.00 Exiles vs Marsaxlokk.
June 13: 18.45 Otters vs Sirens; 20.00 Marsaxlokk vs San Ġiljan.