Two former Maltasong chairmen yesterday said Malta should go "back to the drawing board" and find ways of creating a better product to send to the Eurovision, as it emerged that Thea Garrett placed 12th in the semi-final.

Robert Abela said Maltese composers were "stuck to the same old melody of seven notes" and they should be much more creative to do well.

He said there was no point in saying there was not enough marketing, or that the delegation needed to work harder. The song was simply not liked.

Mr Abela said the festival may need to open up to allow foreign composers to compete locally, and more importantly there had to be a larger budget to produce the song more professionally.

He also felt the notorious reciprocal voting between neighbours did not have a big impact this year.

"This year everyone went with a low budget... there were none of the usual antics of other years. But the production quality of the songs was fantastic," he said.

Norman Hamilton, who had a very successful run when Chiara placed third in 1998, also believes there has to be more marketing and promotion.

However, he added that the jury in charge of short-listing the Maltese entries for the local festival had to be more careful to ensure the best songs were not left out.

"Neighbour voting has an effect, but Germany did not win because of neighbours," he said, adding that, although it would have been nice for Malta to qualify for the final, the song would definitely not have triumphed there.

Meanwhile, the head of this year's Maltese Eurovision delegation Joe Dimech insisted Malta had been denied a place in the final because of a big influence of neighbouring countries voting for each other.

"Many people have told us this, even those from other delegations," he said, adding that just because Malta did not do well in the semi-final it did not mean it would not have had a better placing in the final.

Asked what Malta should do to improve its placing next year, he said the results of one year of Eurovision did not give a clear indication of what should be done next year.

He said a variety of musical genres did well on the final night and it all depended on the tastes of those who voted.

"As the Public Broadcasting Services we are mostly in charge of the organisational part. Now we have to listen to other people to see if there's something we can improve upon and we will carry out a detailed analysis with the feedback of other composers, authors and organisations," he said.

The Maltese delegation returned on Sunday night after staying to watch the second semi-final on Thursday and Saturday's final show.

They arrived at 9.50 p.m. with Thea welcomed by scores of fans who went to the airport to greet her, causing her to break down in tears.

Meanwhile, the final scoreboard revealed some interesting results.

Poland and Malta both gave each other zero points, despite the close friendship struck between Thea and Polish singer Marcin Mrozinski.

Malta garnered most of its votes from Eastern European countries Slovakia, Bosnia Herzegovina and FYR Macedonia.

Malta gave votes to all of the countries that qualified in the top 10, except Serbia. Instead, Malta voted for Finland, the country that placed 11th before Malta.

Interestingly, Thea toured two countries for promotional purposes: Slovakia, which gave her maximum points, and Belgium, which gave her nothing.

Malta even voted for Bosnia Herzegovina and Russia, countries that many Maltese accused of stealing Thea's place in the final because of political voting.

Meanwhile, Germany yesterday celebrated its victory, with 40,000 people greeting their winner Lena, while England, which placed last for the third time in eight years, came to terms with the fact that it was not just political voting that was causing bad results but the quality of their songs.

Factbox

How Malta voted:
Belgium (12 points) Iceland (10), Greece (8), Moldova (7), Albania (6), Belarus (5), Portugal (4), Bosnia Herzegovina (3), Finland (2) and Russia (1).

How other countries voted for Malta:
Slovakia (12), Bosnia Herzegovina and FYR Macedonia (6), Iceland (4), Estonia and Portugal (3), Albania, Belarus, Germany and Greece (2), Finland, Latvia and Spain (1).