Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/767061
44 Sport maltatoday, SATURDAY, 24 DECEMBER 2016 PHOTOGRAPHY BY IAN STILON PHOTOGRAPHY BY IAN AQUILINA RUGBY BRYAN CORLETT THERE'S a saying in Rugby "Let the Ball do all the work ", in other words keep the ball mov- ing and make the other team have to work to get it off you. But I want to add to that, that in Rugby a lot of work is done "off the ball". That means, where do you place yourself, do you place yourself so that you can be an assist. Now that doesn't only just apply in the field of play, but in the grand scale of things, it also includes all the people who volunteer their time to make sure that the ball, teams and events are all moving in the right direction. With a change over in the committee of the Malta Rugby Football Union (MRFU) this year, the good works of the outgoing president, Brian Dal- ton and pecretary, Don Hewer have now been inherited by the incoming president elect Steve Busuttil and committee. Upon that solid foundation 2016 was a year of great achievements, but also a sign that the best is yet to come. The Malta Men's 7-a-side team won the European Tour- nament in Hungary and the Women's 7-a-side team were Silver medallists in the Euro- pean tournament in Bosnia- Herzegovina. All the work that they put in for the preparation paid off, the Coaches Damian Neill for the Men and Carmelo Llongo for the Women, fine tuned their teams to achieve great success in their respec- tive tournaments, they put Malta on the European Rugby map. The Malta National team won away against Andorra 63 points to 15, in a game that the Malta boys really let loose with their running style of Rugby. That was followed up with another comfortable win against Cy- prus at home, by 31 points to 3 to end the International season on a high, with the next Inter- national games to be played in the spring against Israel and Croatia. Club Rugby has developed in strength and quality, with any of the four top teams being able to vanquish each other. The MRFU looks to further nurture the local competitions in 2017, with the hopes of attracting even more players to the game. Creating a larger pool of play- ers to feed our National Squads and take the teams to new lev- els. The local league will also ben- efit further from the growing youth structures, which went from strength to strength in 2016. Thanks to the excellent work of the MRFU Youth Com- mittee and all the coaches in- volved, a community of young ruggers has grown, all with a spark in their eyes as they set their sights on the senior squads and obviously the hon- our of being part of the Na- tional Squad. The goal for 2017 is to further this work, with projects to take rugby to more schools and bring more young players to our sporting family. The development of Rugby continues in the schools and the Women's Rugby is develop- ing and the playing numbers are increasing, which augurs well for Rugby in Malta for 2017. Malta Rugby: A year in Review