The second round from the BOV Premier Division regular season gets underway today at the National Pool in Tal-Qroqq.

Leaders Neptunes Grimaldi start favourites to extend their unbeaten run to six matches this summer when playing Valletta McDonald’s.

With the top three at the end of this round qualifying for the Championship Pool, no team with title ambitions will be keen on dropping useful points at this stage of the competition.

Neptunes, winners of the league these past four years, are the only side without defeat so far.

The Reds have been consistent and shown they’re still the team to beat as their fine displays amply testify, including a comfortable 18-9 win over Valletta when the preliminary round took off last month.

However, today’s match could be tricky for Neptunes as the Citizens have shown signs of improvement as the competition progresses.

Last weekend, Valletta chalked up their first three-pointer after a deserved 13-10 win over Sirens Ritter Sport that lifted them off the bottom of the table, two points ahead of Exiles Ferretti.

Neptunes were equally impressive though as Sergey Markoch’s men had the better of San Ġiljan AllCare Insurance 11-8 to open a four-point lead over the second-placed Saints in the standings.

Tomorrow, Sliema Frank Salt Real Estate will have to be wary of a wounded Sirens who were unable to slip into gear against Valletta on Saturday.

Defeat was costly for the St Paul’s Bay team as they could have leap-frogged the Blues into third place ahead of their crucial head-to-head with a place in the Championship Pool at stake.

In their last match, Sliema manifested signs of uneasiness as they were held to a draw (11-all) by modest Exiles who were all out to make up for the 18-5 upset to the same Blues in the KO quarter-final a few days before.

Sliema may have underestimated their opponents but they will rue those two lost points as another failure against Sirens tomorrow could mean they will have to sweat hard to gain a top-three finish.

Meanwhile, many expect San Ġiljan to return to winning ways when playing Exiles in tomorrow’s second match in programme.

However, they will be fully aware of what to expect if Exiles produce the same kind of resistance they did in their previous match.

Programme
Today: 19.00 Valletta vs Neptunes.
Tomorrow: 18.45 Sirens vs Sliema; 20.00 Exiles vs San Ġiljan.

Premier League