Frans Mintoff qualifies to the last 45 at the European Snooker Championship

On the third day of the European Men’s Snooker Masters Championship, being held in Albufiera, Portugal, the round robin group phase was concluded and Frans Mintoff now joins Philip Ciantar and Alex Borg in the knock out stage. Saturday, he had an exceptional day and won his both matches 3-0.

Frans Mintoff’s opponents were Saulius Pajarskas, of Lithuania, and Austrian player Thomas Grendelmeier.

In the afternoon session, Mintoff eased past Pajarskas, winning the first three frames 69-42, 57-7, 84-16. In the evening session, he defeated Grendelmeir by three clear frames with scores of 51-49, 61-1, 63 -14.

In the afternoon session, Alex Borg lost his last group match against the Scottish player Gary Thomson, 3-1. This was a direct match for the winner of Group J.

Although David Zammit and Ivan Attard did not qualify, on the last day of the groups they managed to win one of the two fixtures they played.

David Zammit beat Polish player Tomasz Leśniak 3-1 (57-61, 55-21, 56-10, 54-17), while in the evening he had no answer for his Finnish opponent Jukka Haapakoski who won the match 3-0.

Ivan Attard lost his first match on Saturday against Englishman, Steve Crowley 3-1 while later he beat Frenchman, Marc Chouillier, 3-1 (31-34, 51-40, 49 -33, 54-28).

Thus all Maltese players managed to win at least one game during this phase of the competition. In total the six Maltese players were engaged in 21 games and won ten.

Late last night, the Secretary General of the European Billiards & Snooker Association, Simon Smith, announced how the knock out phase will continue and declared that the Maltese player, Philip Ciantar obtained the best results in these first three days of competiton and thus has been placed as the number 1 seed for the knock out stage.

Ciantar now automatically plays with the last 32 and his next fixture will be on Monday at 2pm. He awaits the winner of the match between the Belgian, Peter Bullen and France’s Jérôme Chatet.

Both Alex Borg and Frans Mintoff play their knock out clash on Sunday at 8 pm. Borg faces Dutchman, Joris Maas while Mintoff will take on Ville Pirilä, of Finland.

On Sunday, apart from the preliminary knockout phase of the individual Masters, the day will be dominated by the group matches of the Masters teams where the six Maltese players will now be grouped into three teams.

The first Maltese team will be composed of Alex Borg and Philip Ciantar, the second one of Arthur Cachia and Frans Mintoff while Ivan Attard and David Zammit will be in the team called Malta 3.

A total of 34 teams from 18 different countries will take part in this Masters teams competition, and are divided into eight groups.