Bronze Australia

Japan and Australia played off for bronze and 3rd ranking in the 1pm game today.

Australia won(?) the right to this game after Thursdays semi against Canada. In a more solid game then Australia seems to have brought out this championships, Australia managed to keep with Canada for the first 30 mins and twice, for several glorious minutes, actually led the game.

Canada however is a team who when they are going to score, can score quickly and the score when from a respectable 3-4 down at 11mins into the second quarter to 3-8 at half time. Frankly, if you are going to let a team score 6 in a row against you then you really should be strong enough to go out and score the next 5.

Australia managed to claw back a goal to be 6-10 at three quarter time but that was about it, Canada breaking away to have the score at 6-15 at full time.

Which brought Australia into the Saturday Bronze game against Japan.

After the lost to Japan in the round robins I think everyone was expecting another tight hard game. Australia however had clearly had a good look at this earlier game and pretty much controlled the result for most of the game. Score was Australia 3-0 at quarter time before pulling out to a 9-2 lead at half time and 14-4 at three quarters.

Japan had some late flashes but in large did not seem to shoot as well as in their earlier games, fully missing the cage in probably about 2/3rds of all their shots. Not that Australia actually kept well which gave the game a vague feeling of disinterest which seemed to creep in from time to time.

End score was 16-9 which of course gives Australia another bridesmaid and Japan their best international finish. Missing of course from the 2010s were the Iroquois so maybe Japan was lucky, but they held England to a close loss and of course deserved their earlier win against Australia.

Australia, as mentioned earlier, collects another bridesmaid and even then didn't really get a chance to pick the dress. While 3rd is definitely better then getting completely humiliated and not even getting a game on the Saturday, we didn't manage to trouble for long USA or Canada in any of the three games against those two teams. In that every player and fan dreams of doing better, 2010 will probably have to be listed as a disappointment.

Coming soon, USA v Canada for the money shot.