It was not the worst song.

Yet Malta ended up very disappointed with the outcome of the Eurovision Song Contest last Saturday. Fabrizio Faniello’s I Do finished at the bottom place in the 24-song final, picking up just one point from Albania.

It was predicted that it would have been hard for Malta to make it directly to the final of 2007. Fabrizio’s song was not among the favourites, but nobody expected it to fare so badly.

The singer gave it his best shot but his performance could have been better. It is clear that the song was not well-received, and Malta ended up with the worst result in recent years.

What went wrong?

We could blame it on the cross-voting between neighbours and friendly countries, so evident once again on the night. But this cross-voting happens every year, and there were several occasions when Malta overcame this and attracted votes from many countries so much so that we have often finished in the top 10 and in some other years made it to the top three.

Malta itself was involved in its own way in this sort of “family-voting”, as it was the only country to give 12 points to Switzerland, with Maltese singer Keith Camilleri forming part of the six-strong Swiss group.

We could blame it on the promotion of the song abroad in the weeks leading up to the final night, but then again no stone was left unturned to push Malta’s entry as much as possible. Fabrizio travelled to several countries to promote the song and therefore it seems that every effort was made to give him the exposure that was needed.

We could blame it on the song and the performance, but let’s face it, there were worse songs, worse interpretations and worse presentations, and certainly Fabrizio did not deserve the placing he got.

The Maltese people’s disappointment perhaps all boils down to the undue importance we all give to the manifestation itself, which is nothing more than an entertaining night of music which could go well and could go wrong, as in fact it did this time round.

Lessons could be learnt from all this.

Should Malta use so many resources, including the thousands of liri spent in such an exercise, on a song? Are we getting a return from such an “investment”? When Chiara and Ira Losco did Malta proud by obtaining such positive results, we did not get an upsurge in the number of incoming tourists as some people think good results would bring. And neither does it mean that a bad result would lead to fewer coming over.

The Finnish entry that eventually won the competition had nothing better except for an original presentation which attracted so many votes simply because it was something different, something that had never been seen at the Eurovision. Nothing more, nothing less.

Every other country seems to take the Eurovision Song Contest with a pinch of salt. But we seem to believe that the country’s year is based on that three-minute performance, and this inevitably does put pressure on our representative.

We should all realise that the competition is not the be-all and end-all of our future. Yes, we should still participate and, yes, we should still try our best. But that is where it should all end.

We should not go overboard as we always do between the time our song is chosen and the final night. It is just a music competition.

That other countries act differently, and certainly with less seriousness and more humour, can easily be seen in the Lithuanian entry – that group which sang We won the Eurovision. And they finished sixth.