Five-Star Cini Regains Maltese National Snooker Championship Title
Brian Cini dethroned defending champion Aaron Busuttil 6-1 in the final to win the 2025 Maltese National Snooker Championship.
Cini is now a five-time winner of Malta’s blue riband domestic snooker event having also triumphed in 2016, 2018, 2021 and 2022.
One of the world’s oldest national snooker championships having been first won in 1947, the prestigious competition is organised by the Malta Billiards and Snooker Association (MBSA) and held across several months at the impressive Malta Snooker Academy in Hamrun.
Each season, contestants on the Maltese domestic circuit are placed into different tiers with those in the premier division competing for the national crown. Twenty players were in this season’s top tier and were split into two pools of ten. They played each other once in a best-of-seven frames match with the top four from each pool qualifying for the quarter-final knockouts.
Qormi-based Cini won all nine of his round robin matches to finish top of Group B and breeze into the single elimination phase. The 28-year-old then made breaks of 80, 91, 64 and 58 during a 5-3 quarter-final victory over Philip Ciantar.
In the last four, Cini faced the very experienced former professional Alex Borg. Runs of 52 and 88 helped 11-time winner of this title Borg turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead, before he reached the hill first at 4-3 up. However, Cini battled back, claiming the final two frames for a 5-4 victory to reach the final for a fifth consecutive year.
Emerging from the other side of the draw was title holder and recent Q School participant Busuttil, who was going for three national championships in-a-row.
The 33-year-old peaked Group A with eight wins from nine matches before compiling an effort of 125 in a 5-3 last eight victory against Joseph Casha, and a break of 105 en route to dispatching Chris Peplow 5-2 in the semi-finals.
For the fifth time – and the third year in succession – the Maltese final would feature Cini and Busuttil. Cini came out on top in their first two meetings in 2018 and 2021, but Busuttil had the best of their recent encounters with glories in each of the previous two years. In 2023 – having been a four-time runner-up in the past – Busuttil won the title for the first time on the very last black.
Busuttil started this year’s final well with a break of 55 but Cini countered with a 70 to deposit the opening frame before doubling his lead at 2-0 up.
A contribution of 107 from Busuttil in frame three got himself on the scoreboard, but Cini strung together the next four frames – aided by runs of 64, 52 and 54 – to regain the premier Maltese crown.
It has been a very memorable 15 months on the baize for Cini who is knocking on the door of turning professional for the first time in his career.
In March 2024, in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cini reached the semi-finals of the EBSA European Amateur Championship where he was denied a spot in the final by ex-tour card holder Craig Steadman.
Near the start of this year, Cini was within a couple of frames of earning a World Snooker Tour card as he went all the way to the final of the 2025 World Snooker Federation Championship that was held in Saïdia, Morocco.
Having seen off several very tough opponents earlier in the tournament, Cini narrowly missed out on the world’s top amateur snooker title as he was defeated 5-3 by China’s Gao Yang who is set to return to the pro ranks this year.
