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There was an unshakeable bitter-sweet feeling for Australia’s Rollers after their Paris Paralympics campaign ended with victory over Netherlands and a fifth-place finish locked away.
The result matches Australia’s finishing slot in men’s wheelchair basketball at the Tokyo Paralympics, but victories over the Dutch and Spain to close out the tournament have prompted questions about what could have been.
Given they had a tight group game loss to United States followed by a quarter-final loss to Great Britain in which Australia was keeping tabs on the Brits at three-quarter-time, the Rollers have been steadily improving since the competition began on Day 1.
Team captain Tristan Knowles reflected on Australia’s upwards trajectory after Friday night’s 82-75 win over Netherlands.
“Off the back of the preparations that we had over the past nine months since Brad’s [Brad Ness] been head coach, we were really, really excited and bullish about our potential in Paris,” Knowles said.
“Sport can be a pretty cruel teacher, can’t it? Netherlands and Spain put us back in our spot early [in the group B matches] in the campaign.
“So having ended our campaign beating both of those sides – if we’d done that at the start of the week we might have had a completely different outcome here.
“That’s the reality of the Paralympics and pool play – you’ve got to turn up and play every single game. That really, really hurt us.”
Head coach Ness echoed the bitter-sweet sentiment after the Rollers had the measure of Netherlands from start to finish at Bercy Arena.
“It’s definitely bitter-sweet, I could use some other words,” Ness said.
“[But] we brought the six debutants [to Paris] which everybody knew about.
“These are the 12 best players in Australia and the young fellas showed at the end why we picked them. It just took them a little bit to get going.”
Ness said that changes to the Rollers’ roster were inevitable and Paris will be the final Paralympics for some players.
“With what it takes now to play for Australia, I reckon there’s a couple of guys who want to focus on their careers outside of basketball,” he said.
“We’re pretty big on making sure that that’s an avenue for people when they finish.”
Watch the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games on the 9Network and 9Now live and free, and on Stan Sport from August 28 to September 8.
By: Scott Spits, Paralympics Australia
Published: 7 September 2024
