Malta Under 17 and Under 13 teams will play Austria between Friday and Sunday at the Peace Band Club in Naxxar.

The official opening will be on Friday at 4.45pm while one hour later, at 5.45pm, Malta Under 17 will play their first session of nine frames against Austria Under 17. The games resume on Saturday at 9am.

The Malta Under 17 team will consist of Thurston Grixti, Shawn Agius and Kevin Grech, while the three Austrian players will Be Paul Schopf, Manuel Urban and Maximilian Thurr.

From the Maltese side only Thurston Grixti and Shawn Agius have international experience when last April they took part in the European Under 19 championship and both players qualified from the group stages to reach the last 32. Both players have also taken part in the Baltic Cup.

From the Austrian side Paul Schopf and Manuel Urban have international experience – they have taken part in the Austrian Open. In those games Paul Schopf beat Swiss No 11 player Martin Schamaun 2-1 while Manuel Urban qualified from the group stages by winning three matches, one of them against Gunther Erchart, a good Austrian senior player who beat him 2-1.

Paul Schopf is also the Austrian Under 21 national champion.

Many well-known professional players like Mark King, Lee Richardson, Matthew Couch, Lasse Munstermann and Patrick Einsle took part in the Austrian Open.

The three Maltese players forming the Malta Under 13 national team will be Shaun Sultana (first Gozitan to play with the national team), Wayne Pace and Jonathan Attard, while the Austrian counterparts will be Sebastian Kapps (Austria’s Under 16 champion), Konstantin Halvan and Bernhard Parik.

Entrance for these matches will be free of charge.