Game 84, 10:20, men, MONTENEGRO 8 AUSTRALIA 7

Thursday, 30 July 2009 10:20

Classification 9th-10th

Referees: Alan BALFANBAYEV (KAZ), Nikolaos STAVROPOULOS (GRE)

Quarters: 1-3, 2-1, 1-2, 4-1

Extra man: MNE 1/9; AUS 1/10

Teams:

MONTENEGRO: Zdravko RADIC, Drasko BRGULJAN, Vjekoslav PASKOVIC (1), Nikola VUKCEVIC, Aleksandar RADOVIC, Milan TICIC, Mladan JANOVIC (1), Nikola JANOVIC (1), Aleksandar IVOVIC (3), Boris ZLOKOVIC (1), Vladimir GOJKOVIC, Predrag JOKIC (1), Milos SCEPANOVIC. Head Coach: Petar POROBIC.
AUSTRALIA: James STANTON, Richard CAMPBELL (2), Timothy CLELAND (1), Nicholas O¹HALLORAN (1), Robert MAITLAND, Anthony MARTIN (1), John COTTERILL, Grant RICHARDSON, Thomas WHALAN (1), William MILLER (1), Rhys HOWDEN, Sean BOYD, Luke QUINLIVAN. Head Coach: John FOX.

Australia imploded in the final four minutes of their encounter with World League and European champion Montenegro, turning a 7-4 lead into an 8-7 loss. Australia had the better of more than three quarters of the match only to abandon the game plan and planned extra-man plays and gift the game to the determined Montenegrins. When CAMPBELL took Australia 7-4 ahead early in the fourth with a long, low shot, the writing was on the wall. Montenegro turned that to graffiti with a sculptured game that saw Nikola JANOVIC from five metres, Jokic on extra, Ivovic from the field and, despite two Australian timeouts, ZLOKOVIC with a backhand goal from two metres for victory. Australia had no answer. At the Beijing Olympics the match-up saw a tie; at the FINA World League this year it was Montenegro by two and here in Rome it was one goal to the Europeans ‹ enough not to go into double-digit ranking.