The teens involved in an incident in Valletta that saw an Irish couple intervene in an attempt to stop a perceived beatdown said they were just “playing” the entire time.

Speaking to Lovin Malta via a representative, the teens said they were “play-fighting” with each other when a stranger appeared and grabbed one of them off of the other.

“No one was hurt in the incident, and the boys were shocked when a stranger suddenly grabbed one of them, though it doesn’t excuse the language they used,” the representative told Lovin Malta.

“Not only was there no blood as previously stated, but the boys in question were playing with each other. They are all friends, and they were joking around.”

Footage of the incident, shared to the teens’ Instagram stories, show them wrestling on the ground as one other boy shouts things like “Conor McGregor”, in reference to the famed UFC fighter.

Eventually, a man steps into the scene and attempts to separate the two teens on the ground, leading to one of them to explode into a series of vulgarities aimed at the Irishman.

The incident was revealed after the partner of the man who intervened when he saw one boy on top of another boy, seemingly fighting, near the law courts in Valletta felt threatened and scared after the boys turned their verbal sparring onto the pair.

“My partner went over to stop it, and then they started ganging up on him and shouting at us as we walked away from it all. They were screaming ‘I will f*** your girl’ and telling us to go back to our own country,” the woman recalled.

However, the teens maintain the only problem was that a stranger intervened and touched them out of nowhere.