Paul Dimech, president Otters Aquatic Sports Club, writes:

For the past few seasons, Otters ASC have strongly opposed the current league format introduced by the ASA. This forces our team to start playing as early as May and figure in matches against First Division opposition during the preliminary round.

Most of our players are University or Sixth Form students and hardly find time to train during May and June because of their academic studies.

Furthermore, the lack of a heated pool in Gozo drastically hampers the team's pre-season preparations.

We have asked the ASA to change the format so that teams of our standard begin their commitments in the first week of July.

Yet, our appeals have fallen on deaf ears.

The result is that until the end of June, we will be fielding a depleted squad. Some of the players have just started or resumed training and some others are members of the Otters U-15 squad.

These circumstances, however, have not dampened our determination to improve. In fact, we have engaged Sasko Popovski to coach our senior and junior teams.