Goals were never scarce in Maltese football.
A careful study of league football in Malta will reveal that there has always been a healthy total of goals scored in every level of the game.
Having learned the game from the British services stationed here, we have tended, at least in the past, to base our football more on attack than defence.
This does not mean, however, that we play an open type of game without any regard for defence. This is far from the truth.
The Maltese are clever people and throughout the years we have absorbed and copied new tactics from the many continental teams which have visited the islands.
As a consequence, although we have a lot of goals, double figure scores are very rare in our game. Most of the few that have occured were before the war and were confined mostly to the lower divisions.
One modern exception, however, took place during the last weekend of November 1964. Now that was some weekend!
On Saturday, Sliema Wanderers went on a goal spree. Showing real zest and verve when they trounced neighbours Gżira United 9-0.
The magnitute of this achievement increases ten-fold when one considers that Gżira were no push-overs. The Maroons had a fine team in those days and only the weekend before they almost held league aspirants Hibs to a 0-0 draw. Gżira only lost the game in the last seconds with a very controversial penalty.
A hat-trick by Joe Cini and two goals apiece from Vincent Vassallo, Leli Micallef and Robbie Buttigieg left only wingman Ronnie Cocks out of the Sliema goal-sheet. However, although he failed to score Cocks was the chief architect of this famous Sliema victory. He had a hand in all of the nine goals scored by the Wanderers that day.
Inside 20 minutes Sliema were already three goals-up. By half-time it was 5-0 and although Gżira tried to make a game out of it after the interval their efforts could not stop the avalanche.
The next morning, everyone was talking about Sliema's amazing win. There was a bigger surprise in store, however, in the Sunday afternoon match between Valletta and Rabat.
They say that it never rains in Malta but when it does it comes down in buckets. That afternoon it rained goals at the Stadium.
That particular year, the Citizens were finding it hard to score goals.
In fact, in their last two outings they had scored only once. That afternoon, however, the City forwards seemed to find their scoring-boots. They turned on the heat and slapped relegation-haunted Rabat 13-0.
One could hardly comment on the run of play. The score spoke for itself. Rabat were only in the game for the first five minutes. Then, George Micallef deftly crossed the ball from the bye-line to Connor whose strong header opened the flood-gates wide open.
From then on the goals came with regular monotony, Tony Calleja led the City attack and helped himself to four goals.
In addition, both Connor and Urpani each registered a hat-trick. Only Micallef failed to find the net from among the City forwards. Frankie Zammit scored two goals and the other came from full-back Vincent Gauci.
The only occasions when Rabat threatented to do anything at all were in the first quarter of an hour when the speedy Charlie Chircop twice beat Mizzi with a sheer burst of speed. The first time he drew out goalkeeper Stivala only for Attard to head clear from over the goal-line. The second time Chircop skied the ball from close range.
The only other Rabat player to come out of this game with any form of dignity was outside-left Lolly Azzopardi. He roamed all over the ground trying to plug holes left gaping by his team-mates.