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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 18 JANUARY 2015 Sport 37 HORSE RACING RUGBY FOOTBALL KICKBOXING Horse Racing season starts today TODAY sees the start of the horse racing season, with an eight-race progamme for trotters, the high- light being a Premier Category race. First race starts at 1:30 p.m. and the distance for all the races is 2,140m. During this racing programme we will also have presentations for all those who won the season's honours during 2014. Champion Driver – Charles Camilleri He is 41 years old and since 2003 has established himself as one of the best drivers on the island. He was champion driver during 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009 so this is his fifth title. During 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 he had finished as runner up. During 2014 he won a total of 39 races. Best Trotter – Uranium des Arkads A seven-year old French Stand- ardbred that was registered in Mal- ta on 20 February, 2014. He won a total of eight races and placed 2nd once and 3rd once while partici- pating in 12 races. This horse is owned by Kurt Saliba. Champion Youth Driver – Kurt Saliba He is 22-years old and has been driving since 2009. During the 2013 season he had finished in 4th place of the annual classifica- tion and last year he was the best young driver of the season with a total of 12 victories. Champion Jockey – Michael Sultana He is 26-years old and is con- sidered as one of the best local jockeys in these recent years. He was champion jockey during 2009, 2010 and 2013 making this his fourth title. During 2011 he had finished runner up and in 2012 he had finished in 3rd place. During 2014 he won seven out of the 11 races that were held. Best Flat Horse – Ollie Fliptrick A 10-year old American thor- oughbred that was registered in Malta on 29 August, 2010. Last year he registered one victory from nine races. He had also won the best f lat horse title during 2011. This horse is owned by Ri- tianne Gatt. During 2014, 275 new horses made at least one start which is a considerable number and 35 more than 2013. It seems as if this season is not going to be any different and in fact during the first two meet- ings of the season 18 new horses should make their first start. Charles Camilleri Overseas burst Stompers bubble EU Professional Football Taskforce members deal with contracts requisites for professional players Swieqi Overseas ..... 22 Sliema Stompers .... 13 MIKE TURNER OVERSEAS started with a much more positive attitude than a hesi- tant Stompers and after some terri- torial pressure scored an easy try in the corner with simple timed passing along the line to create an overlap for winger C. Borg. However Overseas failed to field the kick off and Stompers ack snapped into well drilled life to apply pressure until they gained a 3 point penalty by N. Borg. Stompers scrum half, Galea, made an incisive break but was ille- gally blocked by Brown, who earned a yellow card. Stompers converted a penaly to take the lead. Galea again led an at- tack following up a telling kick, but Overseas defence led a counter at- tack. Cayton Cassar the Overseas captain had returned after injury and was leading with some telling hand off charges at number 8. Overseas had the edge in the pack but Stomp- ers backs always looked potentially dangerous, without their usual slick smoothness and timing. Overseas began to exert long terri- torial pressure and Attard made a vi- tal turnover on his own line. Overseas Briffa wasted good possession and ground in attempting a drop goal and the backline began to fall into their big fault of passing along and across to nowhere. Suddenly from the mid- dle of this muddle Stivala swept in a directional change to brilliantly dip, swerve and sidestep his way to score in the corner by beating and fooling some eight or nine defenders and re- gain the lead for Ovetseas to be 10 – 6 up at half time. Stompers went straight into at- tack at the start of the second half, with Attard and Camillieri beating several men, and Jeremy Debattista always a powerful running threat. Unfortunately for Stompers his pow- erful running was often ignored as the men inside him chose to hang on rather than pass at crucial moments. Overseas began to look breathless but their lineout was the more effec- tive unit and their tight scrum was the best. Cassar then scored another brilliant individual try with a break off the scrum and a 50 metre sprint, converted by Briffa and Overseas were stretching away to 17 – 6. Stompers hit back almost imme- diately with a well worked blindside break, smart inter passing between Galea and Debattista, a lovely dum- my by Galea and he scored under the posts for Borg to convert. Now there were only four points in it and all was to play for. Stompers looked threat- ening several times but their passing was often messy or selfish so chances were missed. Borg missed an important pen- alty attempt, but Overseas idiotically failed to kick clear and tried to run out from their own try line – an ele- mentary mistake which gave Stomp- ers a long period to attack. However Overseas held out and worked up to Stompers end. A cheeky chip by Briffa almost led to a score and defenders gave away a penalty. In fact under the pressure Stompers were giving away penalties from which Overseas were taking the option of going for tries. A lovely chip by Briffa gave Camillieri no op- tion but to carry over and Overseas had a scrum five metres out. Cassar broke but was strangely held out but Luke Galea made no mistake from the repossession to drive over in the corner and tie up the result for Over- seas. DANIEL "the Jet" Zahra this month will defend his World Title Belt in a match in Italy. The competition will be sanc- tioned by the World Kickbox- ing Network (WKN). The competitions season for the athletes of Ying Yang Team Noel Kickboxing Club will start with a match in It- aly. "The Jet" will face Chris- tian Zahe from Italy in a 5x3 match with K1 rules. It will be his first match this year that will initiate a series of other competitions. These will all be on a professional level and with K1 rules, both in Malta and abroad. Zahra currently has a profes- sional record of 12 matches with 9 wins and 3 losses. "The Jet" holds the WKN World Title Belt in the under 67kg category. This year he has to compete to defend this title for the third time. Since the start of his profes- sional career Zahra faced mostly athletes from Europe. He was the first Maltese Kickboxer who took part in a competition broad- cast live on the Eurosport channel. In 2014 he entered in Malta's kickboxing history when he faced an athlete from Japan and the match ended with a victory for Malta. Zahra's match in Italy will headline the main event with the return of Italian athlete Giorgio Petrosyan. He is con- sidered one of the best athletes of the world in his category in K1. All the matches in this gala will be on a professional level. This year "the Jet" was also nominated among the fi- nalists for Sportsperson of the year under the discipline of kick- boxing. For more information visit the Facebook page of Ying Yang Kick- boxing or contact Master Noel Mercieca on 79208283. Daniel "the Jet" set for a title match in Italy THE implementation of the mini- mum requisites for contracts of professional players across Europe was dealt with when the members of the European Professional Foot- ball Taskforce met delegates from the Malta Football Association. The main item on the agenda was the agreement between UEFA, the European Clubs' Association, FIFPro, the World's Player Asso- ciation and the European Profes- sional Football Leagues. The role of UEFA as the govern- ing body of European Football is to act as a moderator in issues relat- ing to clubs' and players' contract agreements. Through these meetings, the so- cial partners have come up with a document that encourages asso- ciations and all European clubs to make sure that all minimal clauses agreed by all the parties involved in the social dialogue are included in the contracts binding players to their clubs. This represents another positive step in the efforts to maintain a solid relationship between football clubs and their employed players. This, after UEFA, FIFA and the European Commission had paved the way with an agreement on the regulations governing interna- tional transfers of players in 2001 in light of the decision of the Euro- pean Court of Justice in the case of Belgian player Jean-Marc Bosman some years ago. During the meeting, the mem- bers of the task force held talks with the MFA president and his other officials together with rep- resentatives of Maltese clubs and players on how and when the im- plementation of the document can start being applied in the agree- ment of players. MFA general secretary Bjorn Vassallo hailed the meeting as a very important step forward for Maltese football because thanks to the new direction of the MFA, clubs and players have started to realise the importance of a posi- tive relationship between the clubs and players.