2009-10 Annual Report - Australian Water Polo Inc

20
FINA World Championships
We arrived in Rome with a brand new team and
only five Olympians backing up from Beijing and seven
players making their FINA World Championship debuts.
This was by far the most changes made to any topranked
team in the world. Our performances leading into
the championships were inconsistent but we did believe
if we played to our potential we could be playing for the
medals and, more importantly, qualifying for the 2010
FINA World Cup, which was being played in Christchurch,
New Zealand. Due to the new qualification which sees
the top team from each continent qualifying and then the
top three from the FINA World Championships, medalling
was the only way for us to qualify as New Zealand had
the Oceania spot as the host.
Our first game was drawn 6-all with Canada after
leading 5-2 in the third quarter and having to score the
equaliser after unanswered Canadian goals.
South Africa was our second game and we were
always in control, finishing with a 23-2 win.
This left us to beat New Zealand by seven goals
to qualify first in our group ahead of Canada. This we
did with a 14-4 victory to qualify automatically for the
quarterfinals.
We then came up against the only European team
that has beaten us in a major competition since the 2004
Olympics — Greece — who defeated hometown favourite
Italy in the cross-overs to advance to the quarters.
Greece plays a style of game that frustrates us in
attack and forces poor options, while also nullifying our
counter-attack through a very controlled offensive game.
Unfortunately, we fell into this trap, losing 4-3. Any
game where you can’t score more than three goals you
certainly don’t deserve to win and thus we were knocked
out of the medal rounds.
This meant we were now playing for pride and were
up against the Spanish in the 5-8 semifinals. We started
Alicia McCormack sizes up a Greek shot at the FINA
World Championships in Rome.
very strongly and led 5-0 in the second quarter. Spain
worked its way back to 5-4 before we went on to win
7-5.
In the play-off for fifth against Olympic champion
the Netherlands, the game was levelled nine times. A
missed penalty in the last quarter saw us go down 12-11
and finish in sixth place.
FINA World Championship Summary
As in 2005, we once again finished sixth the year
after the Olympics and as in 2005 we had to rebuild our
team as we had eight players retire after Beijing.
Unfortunately, our athletes do not see water polo as a
career like they do in other countries and we have a lot of
our players retiring after each Olympics, while the other
countries are being paid handsomely to play in Europe
for clubs and also internationally. This allows them to
maintain strong, experienced teams, especially after the
Olympic Games.
The sixth-placed finish was disappointing, especially
the way we lost the quarterfinal 4-3 to Greece. If we
had won that game we may have had a false sense of
security of where we were and this could have proved
costly in the future. Instead we had to have a thorough
review of our strengths and weaknesses to help us plan
for the lead-up to London 2012.
The following factors were found to be contributors
to our failure:
• Poor individual skills. Not enough skill training
was being done on a daily basis and players were
not looking at improving their ball skills outside of
training.
• More individual and positional training. The need to
work more in small groups while also maximising
the opportunity to train when pool space is easily
accessible.
• Lack of time spent together as a team. This affected
our team dynamics and when it came to the crunch
the senior players were expected to win the games
while the new players sat back and made little
contribution in the pressure situations. I take full
responsibility for this, as I wanted to try and stop
burnout of the five Olympians backing up. While
these players were physically fit and refreshed,
they lacked important match fitness apart from
Bronwen Knox, who spent the European winter
playing in Greece after the Olympics. We decided
to spend more time together by holding four-day
camps during the NWPL and also spending seven
weeks together in the lead-up to the World League
Super Finals, which was our main focus for 2010.