Next week, much of the interest of local sport followers will be on the Small Nations Games that are being held in Andorra. These are games where eight small European nations compete against each other in a number of different sport disciplines.
Basketball is one of the original sports in these games. In fact the first ever medal won by Malta in these games came in basketball when a bronze medal was won in San Marino.
In this year’s edition of the games, only the female basketball team will be participating in the Games. Many surely remember that two years ago, in the edition of the games held on our islands, the female basketball side managed to win the gold medal surpassing Cyprus, Iceland and Luxembourg in the standings.
According to the original calendar, issued by the organisers of Andorra 2005 some months ago, the female competition was to be played on five days as five countries had registered to participate.
However late developments just this last ten days has led to a revamp of the whole calendar as only four countries will be playing. Malta’s chances of a medal have technically risen much higher when one notices that the country to pull out in the last moment happens to be none other than Cyprus, the silver medallists in Malta two years ago.
Thus Malta will be facing Iceland, Luxembourg and host nation Andorra in the new 4-day calendar which ends on Friday 3 June.
Malta kicks off the whole basketball programme in the games when facing Luxembourg on Tuesday 31 May. The following day the opponents are Iceland and then on Thursday the local national team will play against Andorra, thus being the only team not to have a day off in between games and finishing all their commitments in less than 60 hours. In fact the ‘day off’ for the local side is Friday when the last game of the female tournament will be played followed by the women’s tournament medal ceremony.
On paper Cyprus’ withdrawal (it is unfortunate to have such withdrawals just as it is unfortunate not to have a full complement, i.e. seven countries excluding Liechtenstein who never competed in basketball, of nations in both the men’s and the women’s tournaments) should boost the local’s morale in their quest to aim for a medal as the Cypriots have always been a tough nut to crack and our record against them is not that rosy, apart from the magnificent display two years ago in the gold-medal game.
Iceland and Luxembourg want to revenge their poor showing and placing two years ago and have worked hard, with some major reshuffles both in the technical and playing departments, to be more consistent in their performances.
Andorra should be the minnows in the four-team competition and if this is the case Malta is almost guaranteed the bronze medal, but then one has to see if the Andorra team (which Malta beat easily last year in the Promotion Cup) is going to have any ‘foreigners’ included in the side although one also has to mention that the Malta squad includes also two ‘foreigners’, of whom, one of them, Jetcheva, was also in the team two years ago.
There was also a do-up in the men’s calendar. Originarily six countries had to take part but Monaco withdrew in a similar fashion like Cyprus did in the female section.
Thus now, the five participating countries, Iceland, Cyprus, Luxembourg, San Marino and Andorra will play a round-robin over five days. Here one expects a tough battle with a high level of play.
In this category, the MOC had decided not to include the male team. There are two facets to this decision. On one hand, one agrees with the MOC that a certain standard has to be established and maintained and that finances are limited. Team sports, especially those with a large number of players, seem to be the first to receive the chop possibly due to the fact that they drain a lot of money from the budget. To make is clear, I personally agree with minimum standards also for team sports but these have to backed by professional independent assessments with no sort of influence from any association.
On the other hand, these Games were originarily established to also serve as a feast of sports for the small nations.
Thus one has to strike a balance always maintaining the Olympic ideal as the prime principle. In today’s world, despite all the ideals and the old cry of ‘participation’, it all basically boils down to money. I trust that the MOC are doing good budgets and projections as this is necessary if the general public is to respect the same MOC and not ‘accuse’ it of using money (coming for the tax-payer in the case of government funds) on unnecessary non-sport related expenses.
My conclusion is that we should back the MOC. Things are and will not always be rosy, even when backed with top-notch plans but then a possible future major sport elation for Malta is, in my opinion, very probable. We have to trust that these people, most for them volunteers, do their job for the good of sport and not for personal glory or exposure. If not, then one has a right to criticise and demand explanations.
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