Australian Stingers into Medal Calculations in London
In an astonishing last quarter comeback, and thrilling extra-time and penalty shootout performance, the Australian women’s water polo team, the Aussie Stingers, have produce one of their greatest ever wins at the Olympic Games, defeating China 20-18 after penalties to progress to the semi-finals.
Rivalling Australia’s miracle gold medal win in Sydney 2000, the Aussie Stingers were able to hold their nerve to recover from 14-12 down at three-quarter time and one nil in penalties, to record a memorable victory that lasted over one and a half hours and was played in front of a packed Australian crowd.
The Stingers, now undefeated with four wins from four games at London2012, battled foul trouble all night with Brownen Knox, Nicola Zagame, WAIS athlete Gemma Beadsworth and Kate Gynther all earning three majors.
In normal circumstances, those four players would have been the cornerstone of Australia’s penalty shootout squad, but with a medal game on the line, Rowie Webster, WAIS athlete Glencora Ralph, Ashleigh Southern, Holly Lincoln-Smith and triple Olympian Mel Rippon were left to stand tall and take the strikes.
A nervy Rowie Webster missed the first shot handing China the advantage, but confident conversions from Ralph and Southern, a brilliant save by Alicia McCormack and a crucial miss by Gao Ao left 31-year old Rippon the chance to be the hero.
With every ounce of experience from her 307-game career on her side, the former captain and Beijing bronze medallist withstood the pressure to place the ball in the lower left hand corner and send the 5000 crowd on hand into raptures.
“It’s one of those games that I think we just showed the spirit of this team,” a proud Rippon said.
“It doesn’t matter what the score is we’re never going to give up and we just fought it out to the end. There wasn’t a moment when i didn’t think we could do it no matter what the score was.
“It keeps the Olympic dream alive.”
It was a high scoring opening term with Zagame and China’s Huanhuan Ma each netting a hat-trick. Zagame was again superb on the counter scoring her fifth and sixth counter-attack goal of the tournament to level Australia at 5-5 at the first break.
Beadsworth and Lincoln-Smith then converted two centre forward goals early in the second term – the latter off a brilliant pass from captain Gynther – to open up a two goal lead.
Every time the Stingers built an advantage, though, the Chinese pegged it back through patient attack and brilliant outside shooting from Ma and Yujun Sun.
The Chinese game, which was built on the strong centre forward play of Jin He, caused havoc for Australia, winning numerous extra-man opportunities and putting the Stingers’ in extreme foul trouble. Bronwen Knox was out of the game three minutes into the third term and Zagame 30 seconds from three-quarter time, while Beadsworth was left stranded on two major fouls for the majority of the second half.
Gynther was able to keep the Stingers in the contest netting two goals, including a 5m penalty earned by Lincoln-Smith at centre forward, but China again kicked away with captain Fei Teng and Ma giving China a 12-10 lead.
With Beadsworth out, 19-year old superstar Southern was thrust into the foreign centre forward position and earned a kick out before converting for her first goal of the game. She then back that up with a brilliant 5m shot to level the scores at 13-13.
China again proved their mettle edging ahead 14-13, before the diminutive, 167cm tall Jane Moran pinched hit at centre forward producing a remarkable kick out against her much larger opponent to give Australia one final attack. From that Lincoln-Smith again rose to the occasion netting a superb back hander to give Australia the equaliser and send the game into extra-time.
In the first three minute period of extra time, China had the first opportunity to score with two separate extra man chances but couldn’t get a shot away to hand Australia the ascendancy.
Then when the Chinese sat off Ralph at the other end she didn’t need a second chance converting for a 15-14 lead.
An extra man goal to China after a dubious exclusion against Lincoln-Smith tied things up, before Rippon was left alone and made the Chinese pay with five seconds left in the period for a 16-15 lead.
In the deciding period Gynther was excluded after 80 seconds – her third – leaving the Aussies with just seven possible field players for the tense remainder. China couldn’t capitalise immediately, but after yet another exclusion, this time to Ralph, China was able to find the back of the net with 44 seconds left.
McFadden called a timeout and it was left to one of the Stingers many heroes, Southern to take the last shot – a bullet that smashed into the posts and ricocheted away forcing the game into a penalty shootout.
The Australians will now play arch-rival USA for a place in the gold medal decider.