Malta to host international canoe polo tournament

For the first time ever, Malta will be hosting an international canoe polo tournament. The Malta Open Canoe Polo Tournament will take place on Saturday 24 October at Dock 1 in Cospicua.

Five teams from Malta and Italy will take the battle to the calm harbour waters, during the Malta Canoe Sports Festival.

The Maltese team has been preparing very hard for this competition and after months of training the host country will field two teams for this tournament.

The beginning of October also saw six of the Malta club members attending a specifically organised training camp at the Circolo Canoa Catania.
Three clubs from neighbouring Sicily have already registered for the games, with interest being shown by other teams from Italy and Cyprus.

Canoe Polo, a spectacular and rapidly growing discipline of the International Canoe Federation, is unlike other Canoe sports - dynamic and fast, technical and spectacular, easy to learn, and accessible to athletes of all ages. 

It has all it takes to make it a great game for its athletes and spectators alike. Played in teams of five in two halves of ten minutes, the game requires good paddling and ball handling skills, bringing together the dynamics in other disciplines such as kayaking, white-water sports, waterpolo and handball. The sport has also an element of contact as tackling players are allowed to push and tip each other into the water, ride over and under the opponent’s canoe and ram other players’ boats.

Breath taking instances include moments where a player is capsized but emerges from the water, with ball in hand ready to shoot at the goal. The aim is to throw the ball into a goalpost suspended 2 meters above the rectangular pitch. These pitches can be on open water or they can even be on a swimming pool.

Since the inaugural Championships held in 1994 in Sheffield, England, rule changes and adaptations have increased the pace of the sport making it faster, more explosive and much more attractive to spectators and the media who have taken a keen interest in the sport’s development.

The introduction of the 60second shot-clock has been a very positive step for the discipline. This revision was made after the World Championship in Italy and has been well received by players and coaches alike. This rule change has also resulted in the use of more substitutes to keep the speed of play high.

In Malta the game goes back to the 2002 when a handful of kayak enthusiasts decided to include a waterpolo ball during their kayaking sessions.  At first this was a leisure activity between friends, who organized their games at the Valletta Waterpolo Pitch, Chadwick Lakes or simply at sea.

The majority of the first six, today still form part of the Malta Canoe Polo Club, providing advice to beginners and also proving to be worthy experienced opponents on the water.

At the end of May 2015, the MCPC participated in its first tournament organized by the U.R.K.V. Michiel de Ruyter Canoe Polo Club, with 48 teams taking part. The games were held on the Amstel River in Uithoorn, The Netherlands. The Maltese club faced seven international teams, securing a win against four of them.

Apart from competing, the members of the Maltese club also served as referees during other games. This new experience provided an excellent opportunity for the Maltese club members to gain experience as match officials, while exposing them to the correct interpretation of the rules. Following the Dutch experience, the MCPC attracted new members, leading the club to organize its first ever International Open Tournament.

On tournament day, games will start at 9:30am at Dock 1 in Cospicua, with each team playing a minimum of four games. The battle for third and fourth place will take place at around 3:00pm while the final will be played at 4:00pm.