Bright start enough for Reds

A bright start for our team, which helped us take a 14-3 lead by the halfway mark, was sufficient to drive home our undoubted edge over Marsascala in the opening league match of the summer season.

The smooth take-off, engineered by the established components of the team, left our opponents in disarray. That was to be expected considering the gulf in class between the two sides. With the slightly unfit Peter Biros left on the bench and Sergey Markoch opting to give Tamas Molnar and Niki Lanzon a definite rest in the last two sessions, our players in the team list were constantly in and out of the water, with the coach venturing to engage the low order units simultaneously in the last quarter. A huge advantage had justified that.

However, the momentum was not maintained and we could only extend our 13-goal buffer to 14 during the last two sessions, also contriving to allow Marsascala to shade the final quarter by the odd goal in nine in their favour.

That mattered very little, but some eyebrows must have been raised at our fringe players’ inability to perform steadily, something which shows that there is still some way to go for them to reach adequate levels when their services are truly needed.

For the records, Stevie Camilleri notched up seven goals, with eight of our players appearing on the scoresheet.