On Tuesday, the under-18 European Junior Snooker Championship competition got under way. During this championship that is being held in Antalya, Turkey, among the 90 competitors registered in this category there are six young Maltese players who were all in action during the group stage.
The best result from the Maltese was obtained by Jake Castaldi who won one of the two games he played. He won against the young Scotsman, Brandon Langan with a score of 3-1. It was the Scot who won the first frame but the Maltese youth recovered well from the initial disadvantage and won three frames in a row with the frames scores ended as follows; 8-97, 67-43, 41-32, 56-24. Earlier in the day he lost to Dylan Smith from England.
In the other matches the Maltese were defeated in every match. Chaylon Castaldi lost to Tyler McCaffrey-Smith from Wales and the Serbian, Tadija Matijasevic while Caiden Casha lost to the English, Kaylan Patel and Jakub Zakrzewski from Poland. Gregory Cachia and Xavier Rizzo played only one game today but lost to Heorhii Petrunko of Ukraine and Mikayel Nersisyan from Armenia respectively.
The group stage will come to an end on Wednesday in which the young Maltese players are involved in another seven matches. These will turn out to be, Xavier Rizzo vs Riley Powell (Wales), Caiden Casha vs Jack Taylor (Wales), Gregory Cachia vs Sion Stuart (Wales), Xavier Rizzo vs Ömer Can Biltir (Turkey), Jake Castaldi vs Geremia Orsi (Italy), Chaylon Castaldi vs Will Taylor (Northern Ireland) and Gregory Cachia vs Eino Vuoristo (Finland).
The young Maltese players who are participating in this championship in Turkey are given an opportunity get involved in one-to one training sessions with the renowned Irish coach, PJ Nolan who came to Malta several times and even conducted a coaching course for Maltese snooker coaches.
