ITS OFFICIAL - AUSTRALIA CROWNED WORLD CUP CHAMPS
AUSSIE WOMEN DEFEAT OLYMPIC CHAMPS ITALY 10 - 6 TO TAKE TITLE OF BEST IN THE WORLD!
[Aug 13, 2006] Photo courtesy Australian Water Polo.
Both Kate Gynther and Melissa Rippon (pictured left proudly holding the FINA World Cup trophy) can now add "World Cup Champions" to their long list of water polo achievements. The two Barracudas senior players were part of Australia's historic win today over Olympic champs Italy at the XIV Women's Water Polo World Cup in China. The Aussie girls stormed out to an early dominant lead 3-0 at the quarter and held an almost unbeatable 7-2 lead at the halfway mark. This became 9-4 going into the last and a 10-4 margin at the start of the fourth proved to large a margin for the Italians to make up. Captain Mel Rippon said it was indescribable: “A lot of us have trained for a long time and it’s finally happened. We had some goals on this (six-week) tour, step by step. We improved every game and there’s still a lot of improving to before Melbourne (World Championships) next year and Beijing (Olympics).”
From being ranked No 6 last year it is a huge step forward and head coach Greg McFadden said there will be “ a lot of pressure on the girls now”. ”I don’t think we will be favourite because there are six or seven teams capable of winning on the day. Look at the teams from last year’s World Championships in Montreal (Canada) — the silver-medallist USA finish fourth and World Champion Hungary was fifth. No 3 Canada was seventh.”
Kate who was crowned top scorer at the earlier World League tournament was once again finding the back of the goal - she slammed in two penalties with confidence and added a third for good measure.Cronulla Sharks goalkeeper Alicia McCormack served fantastically in the cage, extinguishing many certain goals.
The team will travel home tomorrow and earns a well-deserved rest after playing in China, California, Italy and back to China in an odyssey that included fourth in the World League. The USA finished without a medal after winning the “weaker” group, the first time it hasn’t taken anything home since the World Championships in Fukuoka, 2001. It lost to Russia 9-8 after trailing all game.
Gold Medal Match Result: Australia 10 (K. Gynther 3, G Beadsworth 2, S. Fraser 2, R. Rippon 1, M. Santoromito 1, B. Knox 1) Italy 6.