FIBA is showing great interest to stage a number of tournaments at the revamped basketball pavilion in Ta’ Qali, Joseph Muscat, the Malta Basketball Association general secretary told Sports Talk.
Muscat was speaking during this week’s edition of Sports Talk where he gave details of the MBA project of renovating its basketball pavilion in Ta’ Qali to turn the venue into one of international standard.
“The transformation here has been nothing less than extraordinary,” Muscat said.
“One has to remember that this place was used as a war hanger in 1942 and imagine that for 50 years Maltese basketball was played in there.
“The renovation process, done with the assistance of SportMalta, was done in two phases.”
“In the first phase we change outside layer of the place, including the roof and phase two was the refurbishment of the facilities inside the venue. New stands were built around all court, offices for the association was set up as well as a cafeteria.
“In a few words, now we can say that we have a basketball court that meets international standards.”
Muscat said that the Ta’ Qali Pavilion has received very positive feedback not only in Malta but also from the international scene, in particular from FIBA who are urging the Malta Basketball Association to host one of its tournament at its revamped court.
“This project has been welcomed by everyone, the players coaches and local clubs,” Muscat said.
“We have also received very positive feedback from FIBA. Their director general has sent us his congratulations and told us something which might seem not very nice but now that we have these premises, makes us proud. He told us that when he came over eight years ago he couldn’t understand how basketball was played in the old pavilion. He said ‘now you should be proud of what you did as you have a pavilion that meets international standard and no doubt I hope that you will be hosting a number of FIBA tournaments in the near future’.”
The MBA secretary says that the new pavilion is like his little baby.
“This project is my baby as I worked long hours on it,” Muscat said.
“I am lucky that this project falls exactly to my line of work so I felt at ease doing it. I designed much of the project but without the help of our architect, Edgar Caruana Montaldo, who was of huge support, it wouldn’t be possible to fit our ideas in the venue.”
