The Aussies finally made the winners list yesterday afternoon, overcoming a challenging Hong Kong team. It was a heart pumping second half after a dominating first half. The Australians leading 15-7 at half time and extending the lead out to 9 goals (17-8) shortly after the break.
From that moment however, the momentum of the game swung and Hong Kong began clawing back the deficit such that at the 43rd minute, the lead was reduced back to 4 goals (20-16). Fortunately, the Australians stabilised with 3 goals to one. Hong Kong called a timeout to break any rhythm and pegged back the deficit to 4 goals at the 53rd minute, but by that stage, they must have run themselves into the ground as the Australians steadied again and then added 5 goals in the last 4 minutes of the game to push their lead back out to 8 goals.
Today, the Australians play South Africa who were defeated yesterday by Poland 21-14. The Australians will enter the match as favourites based on that result (and their result in the pool match against Poland a 21-24 loss).

Some video highlights have successfully been uploaded to the KNKV KorfballTV site at korfballtv.nl  and work continues in China to get a reliable and speedy internet connection up and running to have live streaming for the Quarter Finals stage due to start on Wednesday.
We hope they succeed!

China is 2.5 hours behind Adelaide (3 hours behind EDST)
as such, Monday’s match will start at 15:40 (Adelaide time) and Tuesday’s match at 18:20.
These are must win matches for Australia to remain relevant in International rankings. We have a good team representing the country and they are capable of putting up the scores necessary to overcome their opponents in the next 2 days.

Australia went into their final Pool match against Poland as firm favorites following their strong performances against Chinese Taipei and England.
True to expectations, Australia gained a 3 goal buffer in the first 10 minutes before the Poles took control to draw level in the following 10 minutes and then extend their lead to be up 11-15 at Half-time.
After allowing the ferocity to blow out to 5 goals, Australia made a last minute run to close the deficit to 2 with only 3 minutes remaining, but the Poles steadied to finish 3 ahead, 21-24.
The result leaves Australia at the bottom of their Pool.

No matches are scheduled for today (Sunday), Australia next play Hong Kong (Monday) and then South Africa (Tuesday) in the bottom 8 competition.

Belgium and then Holland broke World Championships scoring records in the first 2 matches of day 3. Belgium demoralizing Hong Kong, 56-6 and then the Dutch belting India, 60-10!
These are unheard of scores… The Belgians have come to beat the Dutch and they’re not going easy on any opponent, in turn, the Dutch cannot allow the Belgians any bragging rights and as such are no longer playing half-hearted in these early pool rounds.
Hopefully we are able to catch some video action of these two matches, with more than a goal scored per minute, they’re sure to be entertaining!

Overnight, Australia lost to England 23-17, the English really only exhibiting their class in the final minutes of the match.

Still no video uploaded to YouTube, but there is talk coming from the Belgians that there are plans to have video streaming up and running from the Quarter Final stage. As soon as I have more details, they’ll be posted here.

Australia played Chinese Taipei in their first round. The Taiwanese are expected to trouble the Belgians for second place this tournament and as such, noone gave the Australians much chance in the lead up to the game.
The result was to expectation, but the margin was closer than expected, the real difference in the 11 goal final margin being the 30 minute, 5 goal (plus 3 free passes and a penalty) haul by KorfbalLeague player ‘Ricky’ Wu which broke the tightly fought match in the second half.
So far, sadly, no video has been uploaded to the IKF YouTube Channel. In. the meantime, check out the incredibly informative Bec Korfball Club site run by KorfballTV’s Tom Brady for a nice rundown on the tournament, and a more intuitive interface to check out the current status of all the teams across the groups.

For those of you with Android phones or tablets, head to the market and search “Korfball” for a free World Championships App.
It’ll allow you to track live scores and view results of earlier matches.
I don’t have an iPhone or iPod/iPad to know if there is an equivalent App for those handsets.

The team has arrived in China and we’re all awaiting the start of the tournament.
As usual, I’ll be compiling info from all over the place here, but I can’t vouch for the quality.

Sadly, it seems that there are no IKF plans for live streaming. Apparently, there will be 3 cameras at each venue to capture video and we hope that highlights at worst and full matches at best will be uploaded to the IKF YouTube channel here.

The Dutch team have their own camera this year and material from that as well as other sources are likely to appear at the KNKV KorfbalTV site.

The Wales team will be video blogging at walestochina.com.

Finally, the official tournament site is here.

Everything starts Oct 27, and as with all international tournaments, follow the live scores at worldkorfball.org.

As predicted, the only close match for the day was the 7:30 slot China-India, the Chinese playing for a place in the 3rd-4th playoff.
Earlier matches were walkovers with China crushing Malaysia 25-8, then Chinese Taipei completing a clean sweep of the Round Robin with a commanding 47-13 win over Hong Kong, they scored a goal per minute for the first 14 minutes of the match while holding Hong Kong scoreless! Australia stormed the opening of their match against New Zealand, then relaxed to allow the Kiwi’s to recover a more reasonable scoreline, before running away with the match in the second half to win easily 29-12.

The Chinese played goal for goal with the Indians, as predicted, their almost uniformly tall team largely eliminated the height advantage that the Indians have enjoyed all week. It seemed to stunt the Indian’s creative play until the team settled into the game after 10 minutes, slowly but surely extending their lead out to 15-9 at half-time. A small, vocal crowd of India supporters joined their team in a chant before the recommencement of play and perhaps the support boosted the confidence of the team as they dominated the third quarter of the match to extend their lead out to 24-12. From that point on however, the Chinese staged a comeback to make the scoreboard far more respectable at the end of the match. India running out victors 26-20.

Saturday sees final placing playoff matches:

12pm – China play New Zealand for 5th place, the Chinese would go in strong favourites having easily beaten the Kiwi’s 31-20 in their Round-Robin match.
2pm – Australia play Hong Kong for 3rd place, the most anticipated match of the day. Australia won the Round-Robin match in Golden Goal extra time, but the Hong Kong team may have been slightly fatigued by playing a match earlier that day.
4pm – Chinese Taipei play India for 1st place, the Indians are confident that they can improve on their previous performance against the Taiwanese, but can they bridge the 21 goal margin that currently measures the difference between the 2 sides?

Day 4 play saw nothing unexpected in the results.

The home crowd would have been disappointed (albeit understanding of the tactic) to see the “B team” line up for Australia against Regional powerhouse Chinese Taipei. The match result was below that hoped for with a very easy 34-8 win to the Taiwanese.
Despite that, there was some promising play by some of the up and coming players with some magnificent pressure out deep, but many times their efforts were wasted by insufficient support from team-mates at the post. The Australians regularly allowing the Taiwanese to hold both feed and collect of the same gender without challenge.
In attack, the Australians struggled against the tight defence, hesitating to give passes due to the ball-line pressure on both receiver and passer and relying heavily on one player in each division to make the play.

Today’s matches are all likely to be foregone conclusions except perhaps the final match of the Round-Robin, India-China. The Chinese have good height to nullify the Indian’s week long advantage at the post, but can they put enough goals on the board to stay with their opponents?
They would topple Hong Kong for 4th place if they can manage an upset which would be very disappointing for that much improved team.