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The Australian Rollers became the prey for a rampant Great Britain in their quarter final at the Paris Paralympics, ending their hopes of a medal and leaving team members deflated.
Great Britain have waltzed through the tournament so far, scoring progressively bigger wins against their Group A opponents – 21 points over Germany, 30 points over Canada and 35 points over France. The Australians were next, succumbing 84-64 at Bercy Arena, despite taking it to the competition heavyweights until a fourth quarter blowout.
“I think we were reasonably happy with the performance today against the best team, or one of the top two teams, in the world,” said four-time Paralympian Jannik Blair.
“It’s just our execution. You can’t miss an assignment. Every time we did, they came up with two points.”
A lot of those two pointers came courtesy of the extensive reach of Lee Manning (21 points) in the first half, the graft of Gregg Warburton (22 points) and a 93 percent shooting percentage for Ben Fox, who scored a game high 26 points, more than half of which came in the final quarter.
It was during that quarter that any hope the Rollers had of a win evaporated, as they conceded 28 to 13. The Rollers now have to back up to fight for the minor placings.
“Gutted,” Blair said. “Unfortunately, it’s a somewhat familiar position for us.
“The damage was done in the first two games of the tournament (losses to the Netherlands and Spain). They were 100 percent winnable games which we dropped because our intensity wasn’t high enough.
“At the top level, when they’re the top eight teams in the world, you can’t give anybody a sniff. If you don’t get the early wins, you come up with a tough quarter and that’s what’s happened to us. It happened to us in Rio, happened to us in Tokyo.”
The Rollers shot 27 of 59, Great Britain 37 of 59. Great Britain scored 12 second chance points, Australia two. Great Britain had 26 defensive rebounds, Australia had 18.
“I think we’ve got some really good contributions out of our young guys, like Eithen (Leard) and Jaylen (Brown), they’ve had great tournaments,” Blair said.
“It makes it a little easier to stomach, I guess, knowing there’s a lot of talent and quality coming through. Hopefully they stick around and really dedicate themselves to it because we need players like them and even more to keep coming through if we want to get back to podium level.”
By: David Sygall, Paralympics Australia
Published: 3 September 2024
