There were some mixed fortunes for the Maltese athletes in action yesterday in the Melbourne Games.
The Lawn Bowls triples team continued to impress with a third straight win, while the pairs team suffered a narrow defeat in their second match.
The triples team beat Canada 2-0 and now lead Group 3 with six points. Today, they face a difficult match against hosts Australia, who are just below the Maltese in the standings with four points, two wins from three matches.
In the pairs event, Malta lost 2-1 on a tie-break against Cook Islands. The Maltese won the first set 11-2, but then lost the second set 9-7. Cook Islands won the tie-break 2-0 to triumph 2-1 over the Malta side. The team’s next commitment in the preliminaries is against Samoa today.
In shooting, Malta finished 13th from 23 participating nations in the Trap Men’s Pairs competition in which Frans Pace and Stanley Cardona were in action.
Cardona started with a round of 21. That was followed by a splendid round of 24, but then slid down with two poor rounds of 20 and 18. Frans Pace had a good 23 first round, but then had a poor 19 followed by two other poor scores of 21 and 20. In all the two shooters obtained a total of 166.
It is interesting to note that a Maltese has won a gold medal. He is Adam Vella who, however, represents Australia and won the Trap Men’s pairs competition together with Michael Diamond. The winners scored a high 189 score, with Vella registering a good performance with rounds of 22, 24, 24 and 24. Diamond hit two straights of 25 in the process.
There was a very heavy defeat for the Maltese women’s team in its basketball debut.
The side, under the charge of Santino Coppa and Carlo Farrugia suffered a 127-47 defeat against New Zealand, one of the favourites to win the tournament. At the interval, the Maltese were losing 59-25.
Top scorers for the Maltese girls were Josephine Grima, 19 Bever Lee Zammit, 9, and Lucienne Bezzina 7. The other scorers were Doreen Parnis (5), Rachel Camilleri (3), Dawn Aquilina (2) and Sandra Schembri Wismayer (2).
In the second part of the game experienced players Josephine Grima, Doreen Parnis and Sandra Schembri Wismayer were all ruled out of the game with five fouls.
Of some consolation for the Malta side was the fact that Grima, who plays for Priolo in Sicily, finished as the second highest scorer in the game, behind New Zealand’s Angela Marino, who obtained 22 points.
Tomorrow the Maltese girls will be facing another of the title contenders, Nigeria.
Maltese in action today
The following is the programme for the Maltese athletes who will be in action today:
Squash: Men’s singles Classic Plate competition: Desira-Simpson (Guernsey)
Lawn Bowls: Men’s pairs: Malta-Samoa (tomorrow – Malta-Wales); Men’s triples: Malta-Australia
Swimming: Angela Galea will be taking part in the 100m butterfly heats.