Australia has won the silver medal at the women’s water polo FINA World League Super Finals in Changshu, China after falling to the USA 6-4 in a tight gold medal decider.
The loss turned the tide a little in the long-time rivalry between the two nations after Australia had claimed January’s Pan Pacs final and triumphed in last month’s London Olympic Test event – both in tense battles with the Americans.
WAIS-AIS trio Gemma Beadsworth, Glencora Ralph and Zoe Arancini all featured for the Stingers in the final and throughout the tournament.
The win was the USA’s fourth consecutive FINA World League Super Final title and their seventh in the nine years the global tournament has been played. Australia has never won the World League but no previous winner in an Olympic year has backed up and claimed gold at the Olympic Games.
As has been the case many times for more than a decade in this great rivalry, it was a nailbiting game throughout. The USA led 2-1 at the first break before a stunning quarter saw the Aussie Stingers lead 4-3 at halftime.
The Americans got one back in the third to leave the scores all locked up 4-all with just one period to play for gold before scoring the only two strikes of the final term to grab the gold.
After the gameAustralian goalkeeper Victoria Brown said the Stingers had some obvious areas towork on ahead of London – and some extra motivation to do it.
“Hopefully we will use the disappointment to spur us on over the next 50 days before we head into London,” Brown said.
“We definitely need to look at our attack. To only score four goals in a game is extremely disappointing and even in defence we had a few individual errors on some centre forward goals that could be eliminated as well.
“I guess in attack and defence we’ve got some improvements to make and probably that’s more in execution as we were certainly creating opportunities but were just not finishing them off.”
Despite the loss in China their tournament victories earlier this year mean the Australians will go into the London Olympics with their best chance of winning gold since the famous victory in front of their home fans at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
The Australians will return home this week ahead of the Olympic team announcement at the AIS in Canberra on June 12. There are still 17 players in Olympic contention with only 13 spots available on the plane to London.
– Water Polo Australia
