Sharks Suffer Defeat to Croatia
Australian men’s water polo team has gone down to medal favourites Croatia 11-6 in their fourth group stage game at the Water Polo Arena.
The loss now leaves the Aussie Sharks with just a single victory from four games with one game left in the group stage.
The Australians will now be hoping Spain can beat Greece in their game later today to force a sudden death final group stage game between the Aussies and Greece on Day 10 (Monday, 11.20am London time) for a quarter-final spot.
If the Greeks win against Spain, Australia will be out of contention regardless of the result of their final game.
Croatia is consistently seen as a water polo heavyweight. They were sixth in Beijing and third at last year’s FINA World Championships in Shanghai but the Australians got within three goals – 14-11 – of them in a FINA World League game in June and looked to be getting closer to the Europeans.
Today however they were outplayed and could only find the net on six of 29 shots.
Gavin Woods got the Australians on the board first scoring a quick extra man goal before the Croatians could set their defence. It was the 17th goal from his four Olympic Games campaigns in the 351st game of his international career.
Croatia then scored twice in extra man to take a 2-1 lead into quarter-time.
The teams traded long range goals in the first minute of the second stanza – Australia’s to captain Sam McGregor – before a five minute section when neither team could trouble the scorer. Then Croatia scored another extra man goal and a penalty in the final couple of minutes of the half to hit the main break up 5-2.
With James Clark replacing Joel Dennerley in goals, Croatia opened the scoring in the third term with another penalty before Thomas Whalan, playing in his fourth Olympic Games, scored two goals in quick succession to take the score from 6-2 to 6-4. They were the 25th and 26th goals of his Olympic career.
The Croatians grabbed the next two goals and ended the quarter with an 8-4 lead and the game was skipping away from Australia.
Croatia scored three goals to Australia’s two – to Whalan and Johnno Cotterill – in the final quarter for an end result that left Whalan admitting his side was outgunned across the pool, despite his personal contribution of three goals.
“When you lose by that many goals against Croatia it doesn’t matter how many you score yourself,” Whalan said.
“It’s good for my own personal confidence I suppose but it’s no consolation losing like that.
“Our execution’s just not coming off. I think mainly our extra man isn’t coming off. We’re creating opportunities, we’re doing enough in normal attack to create opportunities, but we’re not putting them away, simple as that.
“We’ve been working on it, we’ve just got to find those holes and put it in there. Croatia outplayed us in all facets of the game.”
Whalan said he thought Spain would overcome Greece and that Australia could then take advantage of the chance to make the quarters.
“Obviously we’re relying on a result from Spain to win against Greece and I’m confident that they will. Spain’s a great team and I think they’re a better team than Greece.
“Absolutely I think we can beat Greece too. It’s not a lack of confidence that this team has. I just know that no matter what the results are we’ll bounce back.”