When I lived in Toronto I used to watch the ‘Blue Jays’ and mixing with the baseball fraternity got to hear the aphorism “the game isn’t over until the final out”, the meaning of which is that even if one team is behind, they always have a chance of winning until the third out of the final inning completes the game. And that is where we find ourselves today. We are still some way from the final ‘out’ and after our loss to an experienced well organised USA team we will now regroup, understand why we were not able to capitalise on an outstanding first quarter, and then move on. In the immediate aftermath of a game you lose it is never a good idea for ‘armchair’ coaches like me to give a game analysis. The coach will have already spent time in hot debriefs with staff and athletes and will have reached into the video analysis in preparation for the next match. I will rightly leave all of that to them. In today’s final group game we ran the USA close and having led for most of the game dropped behind in the final few minutes to lose 50-48 – a score which I think flatters our opponents. We have been here before and we will have to understand why we seem unable to maintain these hard-earned leads – that is for another day. Meanwhile we play Japan, the unbeaten hosts, in the first of the semi-final games at 6:15 am in the morning. They chalked up a 57-53 win against current Paralympic gold medallists Australia who play the USA in the second semi-final which starts at 0930. It was a three-way tie in Group A with Australia, France, and Denmark all chalking up the same number of points. Australia came out on top, calculated by the goal difference between the three tied teams. Our European colleagues will understandably be disappointed but it is great to see that European teams are now catching up with the best from the North America and Oceanic zones. Let’s hope we are where we want to be when that final out is reached.
David Pond
