Australia to Play Iran in Youth World Champs
The Australian Youth men’s team has put on their most clinical display of the tournament to dispatch with Colombia 15-2 in their final Group B game at Challenge Stadium in Perth.
The victory cemented Australia’s position as the number two team in their group and earns them a Day 6 clash with Iran (8pm Perth time) for the chance to take on Hungary in the quarterfinals.
There were some promising signs for the Australians – Ciaran Wolohan in particular was a menace at both ends of the pool, defending with power and pressure then threatening with the ball in his hand, even scoring a first quarter goal from a second centre forward position.
Matthew Skinner was a rock and WAIS scholarship holder William Mackay was safe under pressure, making his opportunities count too.
And fellow WAIS athlete Luke Pavillard showed his undoubted potential every time he was in the water. The left-hander has sublime skills, is one of the quickest in the pool and possesses the physique to go all the way in this sport.
In a two and a half minute period to start the third quarter he scored a sizzling goal after taking a pristine Matthew Perrott pass on the hand, delivered a pinpoint pass of his own for Blake Buckley to score, got himself another by dancing towards the goal with three defenders approaching and then blocked Colombian shot. It was a snapshot of what is to come in his career.
Australian head coach Chris Wybrow said Pavillard was warming into the tournament and shaped as a threat in the coming games.
“Luke’s just starting to believe in himself a bit,” Wybrow said. “He’s the youngest player in the team at 16 and it’s taken him a couple of days to come out of his shell and I think he’ll be someone to watch for the next few games.”
Australia scored four goals to Colombia’s one in the first term with Buckley, Wolohan, Gordon Marshall and Mackay all contributing to the scoresheet and while the intensity was still there the Australians looked to be a lot calmer than they had appeared in their previous few appearances.
The second quarter went much the same as the first with Australians Reed Cotterill, Marshall and Perrott scoring the period’s only points to enter halftime with the scoreboard reading 7-1.
The effort to keep pace with the Australians in the first half started to take its toll on Colombia who seemed to fatigue badly in the third quarter and tried to slow the pace of the game. But that tactic didn’t work as they made some basic errors, Cocokios made some inspired saves and Australia extended to 12-1 at the last break.
The last quarter saw goals to Cotterill (off a Pavillard pass), Wolohan (in extra-man) and Pavillard (off a 5m earnt by Marshall) and the game ended at 16-2.
Wybrow described the performance as “a lot more clinical” and noted that the Australians had just three bad passes tonight compared to 14 against New Zealand 24 hours earlier.
Wolohan said the Australians came to the pool focussed on the task at hand with the aim of making better decisions in the water.
“We really focussed in our team meeting on keeping calm because we kind of panicked in our other games,” Wolohan said.
“It was one of our main goals to keep it calm and have a lot of communication and the boys did pretty well at that.
Wolohan said Australia would sit down and view film of their next opponents Iran and particularly their prolific goalscorers Mahmoud Gholamnejad and Hamed Khanbanan.
“They have two good shooter who have scored most of their goals so we’ll look at some video and our coaches will come up with the right game plan to get the tactics to win the game.”
– Australian Water Polo
