Brian Cini eases through to Last 16 in European Snooker Championships

On Monday, in Antalya, Turkey in this year’s edition of the European Snooker Championship Malta won seven matches out of eight. Brian Cini won his two encounters and booked a ticket for the knock out stage.

Cini actually started the day and also closed the day. During today’s first session the Maltese had a flying start against, Adil Bilbil of Turkey and after exchanging the first few shots Cini recorded a break of 101 points to win the frame and continued on to register a 3-0 easy victory.

Cini finds evening match tough going

In the evening match Cini found things much tougher even if he won, 3-1. His opponent was the Croatian, Sven-Goran Maier. The Croat won the first frame as the Maltese didn’t seem to be performing in his best form.

Cini made several errors including two fouls when only two balls were remaining on the table. Although Cini won three consecutive frames and closed the match he was never superior to the Croatian opponent.

In the last frame he was behind and was forced topot the last two balls to emerge victorious. His last groupmatch can be considered as a decider for Group C winner. His opponent will be, the Polish, Michał Kotiuk, won both his games on the first day as well.

All other Maltese perform well

In their first group game, Aaron Busuttil, Chris Peplow, Arthur Cachia and Alex Borg all recorded 3-0 convincing wins, against Roger Reppe of Norway, Aleksandr Vlassiv of Estonia, Miguel Ruivo of Portugal and the Spaniard, Rafael Argente respectively.

Joseph Casha showed a great amount of determination when he was two frames behind against Oskar Charlesworth of Austria but still managed to turn the result in his favor after winning three frames in a row, finishing with a 3-2 victory.

The only Maltese player who came out as a loser was Philip Ciantar. He was beaten, 3-0, by the Scotsman, Ross Vallance.

On Tuesday every Maltese player will compete in one game only and Brian Cini finishes his first stage commitments. All matches are programmed as follows:

Note: All the times of the schedule is according to the time inMalta.

Gerald Fenech

Sports Editor
Veteran Journalist