Medal Hopes Ended for Stingers and Sharks

Australia’s medal hopes at the 2017 FINA World Championships in Budapest have been dashed after both the women’s and men’s teams suffered defeat at the quarter final stage.

As circumstance had it, both the Stingers (v USA) and Sharks (v Serbia) faced cross-over matches with the top ranked and reigning Olympic champions in their quarter finals, with the women putting in a spirited performance to lose 7-5, whilst the men were out-gunned losing 15-5.

The Stingers have a storied history with the USA, dating back to the Aussies winning the first ever Olympic gold medal at the Sydney Games in 2000 with a last-ditch win over the Americans. The USA has held sway ever since however, and in Budapest they added another major tournament win over the Australians.

Despite a defence dominated opening, where neither side could find a goal, Australia lost touch in the second and third quarters, eventually trailing 7-3, before a rousing finale, led chiefly by a four goal effort to Keesja Gofers sparked hopes of an upset. The US team held firm however, and move through to the semi-finals, keeping alive their world title defence.

WA Olympian Zoe Arancini celebrated her 200th international cap for Australia and despite the loss, said she was impressed by the team’s fight.

“It was fantastic to play my 200th game for Australia today. While the loss against the USA is very disappointing, we’re very proud of ourselves, we took it to them all the way and we can only go up from here,” she said.

Arancini was joined in the national set-up by fellow West Aussies Jessica Zimmerman and Lilian Hedges.

    

For the Aussie Sharks, their young and inexperienced team were always rank outsiders to topple the all-conquering Serbians.

And so it proved, as the Olympic and World champions won all four quarters to secure passage to the semi-finals courtesy of a 10 goal victory.

WA athlete and team captain Aaron Younger found the back of the cage for the Australians and he was joined in the Sharks squad by West Australians; Ed Slade, Tim Putt, James Fannon, George Ford and Andrew Ford.

Post-match Younger said the result would be a learning curve for the team.

“It is disappointing we loss – it showed our inexperience, but this is the start of our cycle towards Tokyo.

“I think this was a wakeup call for the boys for where we need to start building towards in the next three years and I think we just need to take the experience from this game and keep moving forward,” he said.

One of the younger players who has stepped up for the Aussie Sharks throughout the tournament is Andrew Ford, who echoed his captain’s sentiments.

“Obviously the final result disappoints us. We are a really young team, but we learned a lot from this World Championship.

“Serbia had better results and probably fought better than us. The quarter-final provided us with a lot of experience and I hope we’ll be able to make use of it,” Ford said.