Last week I returned to beautiful Malta to hold a another Junior Developmental Camp for the Malta Billiards & Snooker Association in the Offical Malta Snooker Academy in the Maria Assunta Complex in Hamrun.
MBSA President Ivan Brincat and his board are really developing the junior game within Malta and they recently crowned U-12, U-16, U-18 and U-21 National Maltese Snooker Champions.
Malta are now planning a Junior Team Championship in Malta in November where teams from England, Ireland, Moldova, Poland, Netherlands, Hungary and Malta will participate.
Talented Players
Malta players aged from 10yrs to 18yrs attended and I was very impressed with their attitude and commitment. The amount of young talent on show was fantastic and I really believe Malta will produce stars of the future in the coming years.
Top Class Facilities
The training conditions were superb in the state of art Snooker Academy with 7 Star professional tables. Malta have also fantastic team of EBSA Qualified Coaches on the island who are also some of the leading players in Malta.
During the camp I worked on fine tuning the player’s fundamentals by working on their Approach, Stance, Grip, Delivery and Rest Shots. We practiced various drills to improve aiming, potting skills, cue ball control, safety and break building.
Camp Structure
We held group coaching in the morning and in the afternoon, the players then had a one to one session where they were videoed. The players received a training plan with drills to practice, a technique profiled with what they need to work on plus the movies on a USB to watch back at home.
We also talked about my training programs on becoming mentally stronger and training within a structure daily to improve more. A specific training program was designed for all the players.
EBSA Coaches
Resident EBSA Coaches Issac Borg and Philip Ciantar who work in the academy will now monitor the players progress before the 2026 Malta Junior Team Championship in November.
Training Aids
The latest training aids were used in the camp to enhance the sessions like the Qline, Master Doctor, Str8aim SA-1 & SA-2, Chris Henry Balls, Academy laser, EBSA Coaching Balls were used to get the players on the line of aim and develop a smoother stroke in their delivery.
MBSA
MBSA President Ivan Brincat was delighted with the feedback from the players. He feels the players are now more motivated to practice drills and match play games to improve even more. Ivan thanked PJ for coming to Malta and hopefully in the future we can hold another camp.
Thank you
I would personally like to thank Ivan and his board and Sport Malta for inviting me to hold the camp. I really enjoyed the camp. I was so happy to see the players work so hard on clearing the drills and listening to all the fundamentals in becoming better players.
Finally a big thank you to all the players, parents for attending. I look forward to monitoring the players at the Team Championships in November. It was an honour to hold this junior development camp as the MBSA did everything in making it a special memory for me.
