The Malta Rugby Football Union have just announced a squad of 10 players for next week’s European Sevens tournament for women which will be played in Latvia.

The original squad comprised 16 players, mostly made up of promising new faces such as Pamela Psaila, Maria Spiteri, Marilyn Grech, Barbara Caruana, Dorien Jager, Claudine Saliba, Rachel Galea, Sefora Avvalone, Marion Pulicino and Cristina Conti, all hoping to win their first cap for the country.

In the end, it was only Jager, Caruana and Psaila who made the cut as they were presented their Malta shirts by Daniela Mallia, representing the Malta Inter-national Airport, sponsors of the national team, during a symbolic ceremony held last weekend.

The other members in the team will be Beverie Sultana, Amanda Cassar, Ritienne Bondin, Clare Casha, Dorianne Borg, Marion Azzopardi (captain) and Vanessa Attard.

Carmelo Longo and Owen Scerri are the two women’s team coaches and Steve Cilia physio.

In Latvia, Graziella Jones will accompany the squad as team manager.

The squad leaves for Riga tomorrow and play their first matches on Saturday and Sunday.

Malta is in the same group as Austria, Croatia, Ukraine, Latvia and Belgium.

Preparation

Depending on the results in the qualifying round of the tournament, the Maltese team will play in the knockout phase and ultimately the final match, deter-mining their overall classification in the championship.

The squad has been training since January under the guidance of Longo, Scerri and Susan Bradley and monitored closely by national coach Damian Neill.

In Belgium, two years ago, the Maltese girls defied the odds and finished a creditable 13th out of 37 teams.

Similar success is undoubtedly in the minds of the current squad who want nothing but to fight hard to achieve high rankings in Europe yet again.