Steelers finish with silver at World Champs

Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 8:54 AM
Beth Newman
by Beth Newman
The Wheelchair Rugby World Champs are underway. Photo: IWRF
The Wheelchair Rugby World Champs are underway. Photo: IWRF

Australia's Steelers have finished second at the Wheelchair Rugby World Championship after a 62-61 loss to Japan.

The Aussies had been undefeated to that point in the competition and beat the Japanese side in the pool stage of the tournament.

After trailing by a big margin early in the game, the Steelers worked their way back to a two-point margin but ultimately were overrun.

Captain Ryley Batt said Australia only had themselves to blame for the loss in the end.

"We killed ourselves," he said.

Not taking anything away from Japan at all, they played fantastic but coming into this game, the whole week we only let 10 turnovers out of the whole week go when we got 112 I think and that game we probably coughed up about 10 of them.

"So, we coughed up more turnovers in one game than we did the whole comp so we really stuffed ourselves up and really put ourselves on the back foot but look I was so proud of the game for digging deep.

"The game was out of our hands, way out of our hands at half-time. as much as I have belief in the boys, I really didn't believe we could get it back.

"We were up by two points but at the end of the day fatigue got us, it's just been a long week and we killed ourselves in a lot of areas.

The Steelers will maintain their world no. 1 standing despite the silver medal.

The Wallabies host the All Blacks in the first Bledisoe on Saturday August 18, kicking off at 8:05pm AEST, LIVE on FOX SPORTS and via RUGBY.com.au RADIO, with the Wallaroos taking on the Black Ferns from 5:15pm AEST as well. Buy tickets here.

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