First qualifying round matches of "LEN Trophy" 2010 finished at Tbilisi watersports complex "Olympic".
Besides host "Ligamus-Tbilisi", "Honved Grupama "Budapest" (Hungary), "Olympic Nice" (France), "Sircolo Nautico Posilipo Naples" (Italy), "Enka Sports Club Istanbul" (Turkey) and "Asa Tel Aviv (Israel) participated in group tournament.
"Olympic" is normal watersports complex. In our opinion, the tournament was not organized well. Representatives of press did not have conditions to work there. There was no place for photographers to take pictures. Besides this everything, Irakli Bartaia, general secretary of Waterpolo Federation, complained in the conversation with "World Sport" that journalists did not broadcast the tournament properly.
We would have left this phrase without comment but it is a pity when representative of such organization which on the last day of the tournament wrote on its official website (www.waterpolo.ge) about starting this tournament (it was written at 20:00 on October 10), indicates us to broadcast the tournament well.
Behavior of Sandro Bitadze, president of Waterpolo Federation, is not praiseworthy. He advised the journalist of "World Sport" who wanted to accurate score of the most uninteresting match between "Honved"-"Enka" ("Honved" won 19:0) to use the abovementioned website.
Of course, it is welcomed that after a long break Tbilisi hosted international waterpolo tournament and it will be good if number of such tournaments increase. But also it is important to organize such tournament better.
In the second round of "LEM Trophy" qualifying tournament which will be held on October 22-26, 4-4 teams went through from each group. These teams took the first-fourth places and won a right to participate in the second round: "Naples", "Honved", "Nice" and "Ligamus-Tbilisi".
Of course, it is good that we went through the 2nd round but we should not forget that "Ligamus-Tbilisi" is, actually, Georgian team with 3 naturalized Croatian waterpolo players. We have better results only than "Asa" and "Enka", so, we have nothing to be proud of. Georgian waterpolo counts on old legendary sportsman Rezo Chomakidze who returned to active sport not because of personal interests but because of waterpolo.
Favorites gained planned success in the last 5th round. The hosts did their best but they could have done nothing against Italians and were beat 9:14. French players won over Israeli team 11:5. "Honved" beat outsider "Enka" 19:0.

Here is the final situation of group tournament:

Roland Labuchidze

Davit Bakuradze