The 70th local waterpolo league will officially commence today with two games played in the National Pool at tal-Qroqq.
Eight teams will be competing in the Preliminary Round. These are Sliema, Sirens, Neptunes, Marsascala, Exiles, San Giljan, Valletta and Marsaxlokk. Ta’ Xbiex and Otters have opted not to compete in the opening phase and will then compete in the Second Division proper.
The points gathered by these eight teams in the opening phase, will be carried over to the second phase. Here the top four teams at the end of the first phase will challenge each other for the First Division championship whilst the bottom four will be joined by Ta’ Xbiex and Otters (these two teams will start however on zero points) and play for the Second Division crown.
In fact the Preliminary Round will come to a close on 23 July when reigning champions Sliema (seven times champiosn in the last nine Summer campaigns) face last year’s Knock-out winners Sirens for the President’s Cup (also known as the Super Cup) in game that will follow that between Neptunes and Marsascala which will be valid for the traditional annual Sportswriters’ Association Cup.
This year’s championship will have the first swim-up at 7p.m. when Sliema, champions for the last four years, will face ‘cousins’ San Giljan. The Blues, who have won a record of 29 league titles and 21 Knock-Out trophies, are this year led by Jubisa Mekcic, a Serbian coach, in their quest to acquire on the few remaining records not in their impressive tally, that of the fifth successive league success (they presently share the record of four consecutive league crowns with arch-rivals Neptunes (1986-1989) and everyone in the waterpolo field knows what kind of rivalry there is between these two local giants).
Sliema start as clear favourites against Warren Debono’s San Giljan, a team which has won the second category in the last years and which can create some sort of surprise if the right chemistry is acquired between the veterans and promising youngsters in the squad. The Saints are the fourth most successful club in Malta having won eight league trophies with the last successful patch being between 1992 and 1995 when they won three leagues in four years.
The second match in the programme, scheduled to start at 8p.m. is between Sirens (five times league winners with the last success in 2000) and Valletta (with a long history in the game winning also eleven championship crowns but the lest success was way back in 1990) where the former are expected to bag in the first two points of the year.
There are then a further two games tomorrow with the games scheduled at 6p.m. and 7p.m. respectively. In the first game last year’s Winter League winners Neptunes start off their 2005 campaign when they face Marsaxlokk. The Reds managed to lure Croat coach Sergio Afric in the close season from Sliema. Afric had already coached Neptunes back in 1996 and 1997 but this was the only team with whom he did not win a league in Malta.
The Neptunes committee and Afric himself surely want to delete this negative record in their quest to end their 11-year barren spell in the Summer League (their last success, the 15th in their history, was in 1993) and also to hinder Sliema from reaching a new record as Neptunes still recall dearly their superb patch between 1986 and 1989 under the guidance of Italian coach Claudio Silvestri.
The last match in the week-end’s programme is that between southerners Marsascala and the Sliema-based Exiles. The Greens, under the guidance once again of Pierre Borg are expected to notch the win as they aim to continue improving so as to build a team that could bring back the fond memories of 1997 when they won their only league championship to date after the club’s founding in 1974.
The fixtures in the preliminary round will be played on Fridays and Saturdays (thus the Sunday programme has been removed, a sound decision in my opinion). Game son Friday will always start at 7p.m. whilst thos eon Saturday will commence at 6p.m. In the last years we had earlier start times and the ASA are testing this new schedule which should be more beneficial to the players and spectators.
In the last years, the first stages of the preliminary round did not create that much interest as there were some large margins in certain games. One only hopes that the ‘big guns’ do use such games to get their players in playing form but also give adequate and reasonable opportunities to their youngsters and in so doing will also show greater respect to their inferior opponents.
In the late stages of this preliminary round there will be the first encounters between the top four, namely Sliema, Neptunes, Sirens and Marsascala and then we would logically expect the crowds to start increasing on the stands.
The Division One and Division Two championships are then scheduled to start in the last weekend in July with the final round of matches programmed for the second week-end in September. The knock-out competitions will then start on September 13th with the respective finals planned for September 18th.
One has also to point out that for the first time in several years, the Aquatic Sports Association will be organizing the waterpolo national leagues without the assistance of a main sponsor. For the last few seasons, Farsons had sponsored the leagues, yet after the contract deal came to an end last year, the ASA failed to find a replacement and now it is organising the summer championships without any financial assistance coming from a main sponsor.