Australia’s men’s water polo team, the Australian Sharks, has used a seven goal final quarter blitz to come from behind and defeat host nation China 12-7 at the FINA World Championships in Shanghai.
Just like in Monday’s thrilling last gasp win over Romania, the Sharks trailed at halftime with the Chinese converting three of their four extra man opportunities and a penalty to hold a 4-2 advantage at the main break.
Once again it was the Australians’ shooting that let them down with just two goals from 17 shots – or 11 per cent – in the first half but they stuck to their team mantra of self belief, especially in defence, and turned the spirited Chinese tide that had the backing of a boisterous sell-out home crowd.
While the Australians got the first goal of the game it wasn’t until the last quarter demolition that they saw the lead again. In that last eight minutes everything seemed to click and Australia looked like world-beaters.
Once again WAIS-AIS teenage sensation Aaron Younger was great for the Sharks with three goals, as were centre forwards Gavin Woods and Mitch Baird in dominating the wrestle in front of goal. Beijing Olympian Anthony Martin came into form too with a strong contribution when it was needed in the last term.
Younger’s WAIS training partners Luke Quinlivan and Tim Cleland also featured in the five goal win over China.
Rather than dwell on the first three quarters the Australian players were looking to take the positives from their last quarter effort with triple goal scorer Richie Campbell saying the team talked at the last break about adapting to the circumstances of the game mentally.
“To win the last quarter seven goals to one in any international game is a pretty good performance so I’m happy and I think the team is happy with it,” Campbell said.
“At three quarter time mentally we just switched on and we said that really we needed to step up the game and we really kicked it up a notch and played to the best of our ability.”
Campbell thought the quarter showed some real promise for the Sharks upcoming games.
“There were glimpses in that last quarter that we played phenomenal polo,” Campbell said.
“There was just clinical execution like the extra man goal that Anthony Martin scored was really overplayed and clinical water polo.”
The win gives the Sharks a perfect two victories from two matches so far in the tournament and sets up a mouth watering clash with reigning world champions Serbia in their final group stage game on Friday with the winner topping Pool B and moving directly to the quarter finals.
Australian assistant coach Frank Otto, who won a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics for his native West Germany, said while the fourth quarter brilliance was pleasing the team needed to put that sort of form together for an entire game, especially against quality physical opponents like Serbia.
“The last quarter showed what we prepared for, what we talked about that we want to play for four quarters,” Otto said.
“We said before the tournament that we have to put four quarters together but unfortunately we now have two games played and we still have not arrived at four good quarters and even though we had a high standard in that last quarter one quarter won’t be enough against the Serbian team.
“Hopefully it is a launching pad for the game against Serbia even though that game will be a totally different one because it’ll be much, much more physical than the game today.
“The most pleasing thing though is we won the match. In two years no one will remember how we won,” Otto said.”
The Australian Stingers play their last pool stage game against cellar dweller’s Uzbekistan tomorrow night. A win will more than likely see the Stingers finish second in their group, setting up a do or die quarter final qualifier with either Hungary or Olympic champions The Netherlands.
-Australian Water Polo
