Frans Mintoff qualifies but Alex Borg is eliminated at European Championships

During the fourth day of the European Snooker Masters Championships being held in Albufiera, Portugal, the Malta contingent was in action in both the individual and the teams competitions.

From the individual men’s championships the knock out phase has begun and 13 players qualified for the final list of the last 32.

In this round, Frans Mintoff won his match against Ville Pirilä from Finland, 3-1 (69-41, 59-38, 39-59, 60-40) but Alex Borg lost by the same scoreline against Dutchman, Joris Maas and is eliminated.

In the last 32, now, Malta will be represented by two players, Philip Ciantar, who will meet with Peter Bullen of Belgium, while Frans Mintoff has a difficult task against the former English professional player, Craig Steadman.

On Sunday, in the teams event, the Maltese players were engaged in six matches from which three emerged victorious.

The best that fared were the team formed by Arthur Cachia and Frans Mintoff who won both their games with an identical scoreline of 3-1 against France 3 (Marc Chouillier/Gilles Grzeskowiak) and against the only team representing Finland (Ville Pirilä/Jukka Haapakoski).

Although they won both games, Malta 2 has not yet qualified for the last 32 and everything depends on Monday’s last group matches.

The other two Maltese teams had different fortunes. Alex Borg and Philip Ciantar represented as Malta 1 lost the first game, 3-0 against England 1 (Stuart Watson/Steve Crowley) but later won, 3-1 (59-20, 63-30, 41-51, 61-11 ), against France 1 (Jean-Marc Beauchamp/Jérôme Chatet).

Malta 3 made up of Ivan Attard and David Zammit found it difficult against their two opponents. They lost both games, 3-0  against Northern Ireland 1 (Declan Lavery/Ryan McQuillan) and in the evening against the German team (Miro Popovic/Diana Stateczny).

On the fifth day of the competition, the Maltese players have to play a total of five matches, three of which close the teams’ group phase and the other two are the important fixtures of the last 32 from the Masters individual category.