The 31st annual Malta vs The Rest match took place at the Royal Malta Golf Club last weekend.

Malta won three out of six foursomes matches on Friday, halved one and lost two. They extended their lead on Day Two by taking four of the six better ball matches and gaining the additional point through the best individual Stableford score thanks to a brilliant round from Kenneth Cachia.

This meant that Malta led 16-9. The Rest had to win eight out of the 12 individual matches on Sunday to have a chance to retake the Sword which Malta won last year. In a tense, yet friendly, atmosphere Day Three play saw The Rest either winning or halving 10 of the matches in the early part of the competition.

Borg Manduca was first in the club house with a halved match against Ray Mountford. Then Stoner, Lewis, Bergedahl, Collins and Alcock (The Rest captain) came in with wins against Malta's Zammit, Urpani, Sansone, Azzopardi and Mangion respectively.

A despondent Malta captain Beck started to smile when his offspring Nicholas, the youngest player in the field, came in with the first win for Malta against the shrewd Davies.

Sullivan followed with another good win for Malta against Conley; A. Mangion then lost to Shaw but the three Borg's in Malta's team - Nick, Kim and Andy - brought the rear end of the competition, toppling Bryant, Waddington and Woodward.

The final scoreline was 27-22 for Malta. With this result equal parity has been obtained in that the Sword has now been won 14 times by both Malta and The Rest.

Three matches were halved over the past 31 years.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.