Jackaroos empty handed but with an eye to the future
Australia’s men’s triples team have been beaten in the bronze medal match at the Commonwealth Games. The world’s number one bowling nation now finds itself in the precarious position of not having secured a coveted gold medal at the half way point of proceedings, after chances in the first five disciplines went begging. Fighting for only its second bronze medal tonight, the green and gold contingent found their measure in the almost-local Wales team of Jonathan Tomlinson, Marc Wyatt and Paul Taylor. At the mid way point in the match the Welsh team had a slight lead of 9-10, after 10 ends, and Australia desperately needed to string a few ends together to establish some breathing room for the first time in the match. Unfortunately for every good bowl the Aussies played, the Welsh team counted with one of their own, with a 13-16 result playing out. “The boys played really well in that match but so did the Welsh team,” National Coach Steve Glasson said. “You can’t fault any of our players, they tried really hard and just came up against a team who also played some very good shots.” South Africa is shaping up to be the surprise packet of the competition, having already poached three gold and one bronze, with a further chance at a fourth gold medallion taking place at 9.45pm AEST. The Springboks took the honour of claiming the sport’s first gold medal on Saturday, and have continued their stellar run with glory in the men’s triples, women’s fours, bronze in the women’s singles and will now play-off in the gold/silver decider against Malaysia in the men’s pairs. Our across the ditch neighbour, New Zealand’s Jo Edwards, is the only non-South African to have toped the dais so far, out-classing England’s defending titleholder Natalie Melmore in the blue-ribbon event. In a surprising scenario, host nation Scotland has also yet to scale the lofty heights of the sport’s pinnacle multi-sport event, having been relegated to silver in the vision impaired mixed pairs, but will go into the men’s pairs finale as red-hot favourites, after Paul Foster and the man widely touted as the best in the world, Alex ‘Tattie’ Marshall, produced a performance of the ages to down England in their semi-final bout, 15-14. In other matches today, Australia’s women’s pairs combination of Carla Odgers and Natasha Scott proved they still have a lot of fight left in them despite they sectional rubber finish in the fours discipline. The duo broke out of the blocks and raced to a 22-0 lead after just seven ends before Niue swung the momentum and peeled off seven straight shots of their own. It was a short-lived comeback though, with a final scoreline of 30-9 in favour of the 24 and 23 year old Australians. “Gee it’s hard to be critical when your team find a way to be 22-0 in front,” Assistant National Coach Robbie Dobbins said. “It was a great start, but then we slipped a bit and they piled on seven or eight unanswered shots. We’ll need to improve against other teams to keep going in the tournament.” The remainder of the countries seated in Australia’s section of the women’s pairs draw included Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Northern Ireland and Niue, with out next encounter against Papua New Guinea tomorrow afternoon at 3:45pm local time (Wednesday 12.45am AEST). However, it wasn’t smiles all round in the Australian camp, with the men’s parasport bowlers with a disability triples now facing an uphill battle after losing their first rubber to New Zealand, 8-11. Australia’s Tim Slater, Tony Bonnell and James Reynolds had been itching to hit the green after spending the first five days cheering on the teammates from the sidelines, with the national rivals trading blows up until the 12th end, before succumbing in the heat of the battle, managing just one shot in the last sex ends. “The kiwis are especially strong and they showed that today,” said parasport coach Kelvin Kerkow. “We probably showed a few nerves out there today which is completely normal, but we need to get …
